R. Kelly tried to discredit us with sex videos and fake emails
- According to them, R. Kelly produced a number of pieces of evidence to discredit witnesses at the trial in his case of sexual crimes.
- Prosecutors told the jury that he obsessively recorded their sexual encounters and kept videotapes.
- He also forced them to write fake letters that said they had offended him, as several prosecutors testified.
In March 2019, when the walls closed in front of R. Kelly, the R&B singer agreed to an interview with Gail King from CBS. He told the news anchor that his simultaneous sexual relations with many young women were not “cult”, but authentic romance.
“I love them and they are almost like my friends. We have a relationship, ”he told King. “This is real. I’ve known guys my whole life who had five or six women, okay? So don’t come at me, okay? Because this is true”.
For two weeks now, eyewitnesses to the ongoing trial of R. Kelly on sex crimes have painted a less charming picture. The prosecutors described in agonizing detail how the singer persecuted them, sexually abused them and kept them in cult conditions, where they obeyed his every whim.
They also described how he withstood the abuse charges for so long.
According to prosecutors and witnesses, Kelly took scrupulous steps to establish a trail of fake evidence in order to discredit the people who would eventually turn against him years later.
One way he did this, according to the prosecutor dubbed “Jane,” was to force his “girlfriends” to write fake letters that would incriminate themselves.
“He made us write letters,” Jane said, adding, “He said that these were mostly letters that would never see the light of day and that they had to use us to protect him.”
Prosecutors Say Kelly Forced ‘Girlfriends’ To Lie In Letters
Kelly instructed his girlfriends to write fake letters based on the advice of his lawyer and “because of his past,” Jane said. Kelly was tried on child pornography charges in 2009, and although he was acquitted in court, sexual harassment charges followed.
She said that Kelly forced her and other accusers to write “four or five” letters in which they made false confessions, begged him for forgiveness and asked him to let them stay in his life. Another person in Kelly’s entourage will look at their signatures and check if they match the signatures on the driver’s license, she said.
“He wanted us to include letters saying that we stole money from him, that we stole his watch, that we were molested by family members, that we were abused and neglected by family members, and so on.” Jane said. …
Jane Doe # 5 is cross-examined by Kelly’s attorney, Devereaux Cannik.
REUTERS / Jane Rosenberg
According to Jane, Kelly would have done the same with the video. If Jane had broken one of Kelly’s weird rules — for example, by not calling him “dad,” not using the bathroom without his permission, or looking at the man — he would spank her as a “punishment,” and then “shoot a video as punishment, “using an iPad,” she said.
“There was a time when after he chastised me more than 15 times, he pulled out his iPad and told me to make a video saying that my father was molesting me,” Jane said.
On another occasion, Kelly made her eat feces in a video, Jane said.
“He told me to smear it on my face and exactly what to say and put it in my mouth and behave the way I like it, I liked it,” she said.
Prosecutors said Kelly obsessively recorded videos of their sexual encounters.
Kelly – real name Robert Sylvester Kelly – is facing a federal court in Brooklyn on multiple sex crimes charges.
Unusually, the charges brought by the prosecutor’s office in June 2019 were part of the racketeering charges. Prosecutors allege that Kelly ran a criminal enterprise in which he forced employees to buy women for sex and then forced those women to obey his orders. Kelly pleaded not guilty to all charges against him.
Prosecutors who testified in court allege that Kelly filmed a video of sexual encounters. According to their testimony, over time, he seems to have become more and more obsessed with recordings.
The woman who said that Kelly raped her about half a dozen times in 1994 said that Kelly only filmed two meetings. By the 2010s, prosecutors said Kelly kept up to six iPads in a backpack he carried around with him and set them up on tripods to record sex.
Prosecutors push a cart with documents related to R. Kelly’s trial as they arrive at Brooklyn federal court in New York, USA, August 18, 2021.
REUTERS / Eduardo Muñoz
None of the prosecutors revealed that Kelly explicitly threatened to release the video in revenge if they opposed him. But it is obvious that their existence influenced their actions.
One prosecutor, who testified under the name “Stephanie”, said she had sex with Kelly for 6 months in 1999 when she was 17 years old. She said that after she had already decided to stay away from the singer, she met him several times, unsuccessfully trying to convince him to destroy the recordings he made.
The man who said that Kelly raped him several years later while testifying under the name “Louis” also expressed concern about Kelly’s tapes. He said he tried to bribe another prosecutor, Kelly, believing that she might own the tapes Kelly had made with the two men, and fearing that the tapes might become public if she testified about him.
While Kelly may not have threatened to post the video, he did threaten to post incriminating photos, as one prosecutor said Wednesday. In response to a lawsuit filed by a woman against Kelly, she received a response letter from him, in which he threatened to publish details of her sex life and included nude photos of her.
“Countermeasures are at an early stage and will be published soon,” Kelly said in a letter.
The singer took careful steps to undermine the accusers’ credibility
Former employees testified about Kelly’s odd management tactics. If an employee broke his rule or did not meet his standards, he often did not pay. Former employees said he also sometimes forced them to write theatrical apology letters describing how they allegedly offended him. Several of these former employees testified in court, describing how he locked women in rooms and controlled the lives of people around him.
Prosecutors say Kelly forced them to write fake letters to “protect” him. Louis testified that Kelly insisted that he write a letter stating that someone was trying to bribe him into admitting that they had a homosexual relationship instead of telling the truth.
“He gave me a notebook and I wrote a letter,” Louis testified. “He told me word for word what to say.”
John Doe “Louis” testifies.
REUTERS / Jane Rosenberg
Louis said a close friend of his – another man who he said sexually abused Kelly – told him that Kelly had instructed him to write a similar letter.
Kelly’s lawyers have not yet been able to respond to these letters. During cross-examination, his lawyers asked Jane to read one in front of the jury. But when prosecutors questioned Jane again, she had the opportunity to explain to the jury that these letters were filled with lies that Kelly told her to write. Jane also said that if Kelly doesn’t like her letters, he will reject them, physically abuse her, and then force her to write another one.
However, undermining the credibility of accusers is a tactic that has served Kelly in the past.
The jury must find Kelly guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the charges against him. In his earlier trial of child pornography, he muddied the waters. While the Chicago Attorney’s Office filed charges against him in 2002, his lawyers managed to postpone his trial until 2008. none of the women allegedly on these tapes wanted to testify before a jury…
At the defense table, Calvin Scholar, Devereaux Cannik, Nicole Blank Becker and Thomas Farinella sit with their client R. Kelly.
REUTERS / Jane Rosenberg
Jury later told the Chicago Sun-Times that although they believed that R. Kelly was on the video, they could not be sure of the identity and age of the girls on them.
By the March 2019 interview with Gail King, only two women were left to live with Kelly at Trump Tower in Chicago.
Jane was one of them, and she revealed that she was lying throughout the interview.
Jane defended Kelly, but she had little choice: Kelly was present off-screen, watching her answer King’s questions.
“He coughed like usual, which everyone knows,” Jane told the jury, adding, “He was just letting us know that he was in the room with us.”
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