R. Kelly’s 4th Accuser Describes Backstage Rape When She Was 17
On the eighth day of Mr. Kelly’s trial, a fourth woman testified that she was underage when the singer forced himself on her.
R. Kelly arrived at a 2019 hearing in Chicago. The singer’s federal trial in Brooklyn began earlier this month. Credit...Daniel Acker/Reuters
By
Troy Closson
Aug. 30, 2021Updated 12:42 p.m. ET
The racketeering trial of the R&B star
R. Kelly resumed on Monday with a new accuser describing Mr. Kelly raping her when she was underage. The woman, identified only by her first name, Addie, testified that she told the singer she was 17 at the time of the encounter, which took place backstage after a concert.
The woman was the fourth to testify that she was underage during a sexual encounter with Mr. Kelly — accounts that have often included physical and sexual abuse. One accuser,
who testified last week under a pseudonym, said Mr. Kelly made her have sex with a person she did not know, beat her with a sneaker and pressured her into an abortion.
The singer, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, has denied the accusations and pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, which include a single count of racketeering and eight counts of violating an interstate anti-sex trafficking law known as the Mann Act.
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This is what happened as the third week of Mr. Kelly’s trial began:
A fourth accuser says R. Kelly knew she was underage
A woman named Addie testified on Monday that when she was 17 years old, Mr. Kelly invited her backstage after a performance. She told him that she was underage, she said, and he assaulted her.
It was September 1994 and she and her best friend were at a concert in Miami, where the
R&B star Aaliyah had been scheduled to perform and Mr. Kelly was the closing act, Addie said. Just two days earlier, other witnesses have testified,
the two artists were illegally married; Aaliyah was 15 at the time, and Mr. Kelly was 27.
After Mr. Kelly’s performance, two men “who looked like bouncers” approached Addie and her friend and told them that they could go backstage for an autograph, she said.
The two were taken to a large dressing room, Addie told jurors. She said he gave her his autograph and she told him that she was “an aspiring artist.” Mr. Kelly gave her his room number at a hotel and encouraged her to come audition, she said. But she told him that she was 17, and did not even know if she was allowed backstage.
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Mr. Kelly then cleared the room, and told the pair “he wanted to play a game” to see “who could kiss better.” He kissed her friend, she said, and then began to kiss Addie as well, she testified.
“He started getting a little more aggressive,” she said, and directed her to the back of the room. He held her wrists, pulled down her pants and had unprotected sexual intercourse with her, she said. “At this point, I was in complete shock,” she continued. “I just went blank.”
Afterward, Addie and her friend “ran out of there,” she said. Her friend wanted her to contact the police and press charges, she said. But Addie feared that she would be “blacklisted” from the entertainment industry if she did.
“I didn’t even know if they would believe me,” she said. “I didn’t want to be victim-shamed.”
During cross-examination, Deveraux Leon Cannick, one of Mr. Kelly’s lawyers, questioned Addie about the delay between the attack and her report to police, which was filed in 2019.
Understand the R. Kelly Trial
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What are the charges? Mr. Kelly is facing
one charge of racketeering based on sexual exploitation of children, kidnapping and forced labor, and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting anyone across state lines for prostitution.
Who is testifying? The trial
centers around six women, several of whom are expected to testify. Prosecutors say the singer physically abused and psychologically manipulated many of them and controlled several aspects of their lives, including when they could eat and use the bathroom. At least three were underage.
His marriage to Aaliyah. Part of the case involves
R. Kelly’s marriage to singer Aaliyah, who was 15 when they wed in 1994. Mr. Kelly’s former tour manager testified that R. Kelly bribed a government employee in 1994 so that he could obtain a fake ID for her.
The 2008 trial. The performer was acquitted in a high-profile criminal case brought against him on child pornography charges in 2008. The trial was centered on a videotape that prosecutors said showed the R. Kelly having sex with a 14-year-old girl. She refused to testify.
Here’s a full timeline of the allegations.
“I didn’t want more victim-shaming and more trauma at that time,” said Addie, who is now 44.
“I’m an adult now,” she said. “I’m no longer a little girl.”
R. Kelly brought women to his basketball games who seemed ‘isolated’ and behaved strangely, a former associate says
A man who worked with Mr. Kelly testified that the two played basketball together — but that the behavior of the women who the R&B singer brought to their games seemed strange.
“They would actually sit in the corner, away from everybody,” the man, Derrick Stevens, said, describing them as “isolated” from the larger group.
If one of the players needed to approach them to retrieve a ball, the women “would cross their legs and look at the ceiling, or the wall,” said Mr. Stevens, who helped with Mr. Kelly’s business deals and coordinated his collaborations with other artists for a short time, starting in 2013.
His testimony served to bolster the account of another woman, who testified last week that she and others went to Mr. Kelly’s basketball games on several occasions, but were barred from engaging with other male players, per one of the singer’s strict rules.
“We would just have to watch the defendant play, and only him,” the woman, who testified under a pseudonym, told jurors last week. “If we ended up looking at another man, we would get a chastising for it,” she said, referencing the spankings and physical abuse she said Mr. Kelly would dole out when his rules were broken.