R. Kelly was convicted guilty of child pornography by a Chicago jury for recording his sexual acts with minors. This verdict came only months after the R&B singer received a three-decade prison term in a separate sex trafficking case.
Kelly was found guilty of six of the 13 criminal charges federal prosecutors brought against him, including counts of child enticement and child pornography for pressuring three minors into criminal sexual activity and creating three videos depicting child sexual abuse.
Two co-defendants—former Kelly’s employees Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown—were also found not guilty on the charges of receiving child pornography and obstruction, which were related to claims that he impeded an earlier investigation.
Following a 30-year sentence imposed in June when he was found guilty of sex trafficking in federal court in Brooklyn, Kelly might spend several years behind bars.
In 2008, Kelly was accused of making an explicit film with a 14-year-old girl and was put on trial in Chicago; however, the jury exonerated Kelly and subsequently informed media outlets that the lack of the victim’s testimony made a conviction impossible.
After seeing the Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly in 2019, the victim decided to cooperate with the police. During the trial this year, the victim testified that Kelly had instructed her to tell a grand jury in 2002 that she wasn’t on the recording and that they hadn’t had sex (three other women also testified that Kelly abused them before they turned 18).
Kelly did not give a testimony, but Jennifer Bonjean, his defense lawyer, said that Kelly was “a victim of extortion and financial exploitation.”
Since the 1990s, Kelly, well known for his singles “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Ignition,” has been the subject of suspicions regarding his interactions with minor girls. When Aaliyah was just 15 years old in 1994, Kelly, then 27 years old, wed her in an unauthorized ceremony. Kelly was accused of sex trafficking in New York in 2020 and child pornography in Chicago in 2019. He pled not guilty to all allegations.