Prosecutors Outline R. Kelly’s Alleged Sex Crimes Ahead of June 29 Sentencing
*New York prosecutors are seeking a lengthy prison sentence in R.Kelly’s sexual abuse and trafficking case that concluded in Brooklyn last year.
He is set to be sentenced next week in the case that was opened following the “Surviving R. Kelly” docuseries that aired on Lifetime in 2019. In the meantime, several of the sex abuse allegations are noted in a new filing from the government. Prosecutors allege that Kelly “methodically groomed the women and girls in his orbit to meet all of his sexual needs.”
“[Kelly] did not permit the women and girls to speak with or even look at other men. In an elevator, they were expected to turn to face the back. While walking through hallways, they were expected to look to the floor,” prosecutors said, Radar reports.
His alleged victims also claim that R. Kelly preferred they call him “daddy” and some were forced to eat their own feces.
The alleged victims told investigators they were forced to write letters confessing to false crimes.
“In these letters, they falsely confessed to stealing money and jewelry; they falsely admitted concocting elaborate robberies; one falsely claimed that she seduced the defendant when she was underage and threatened to claim he raped her if he would not engage in sexual activity with her,” the motion revealed, according to the report.
Kelly also forced his alleged victims to be filmed having sex with other women and men, including a man he referred to as “nephew”.
Federal prosecutors in New York want R. Kelly to spend more than 25 years in prison after a Brooklyn jury found the R&B singer guilty of racketeering at a sex-trafficking trial last year.
In their filing, prosecutors cited Kelly’s “decades of crime” sexually abusing women and girls and his “callous disregard for the very real effects that his crimes had on his victims,” according to a sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday, per CNN. They also argue that his actions were fueled by a belief that his “musical talent absolved him of any need to conform his conduct — no matter how predatory, harmful, humiliating or abusive to others — to the strictures of the law.”
“While the government doubts that the defendant will be deterred, a lengthy sentence of imprisonment will serve to deter others — including those with wealth, fame and the outsized power such status brings — from engaging in similar crimes,” the memorandum said.
“This is particularly so given the high-profile nature of the defendant and the likelihood that the length of his sentence will be widely publicized,” it added.
R. Kelly is expected to be sentenced on June 29 in the Eastern District of New York.