According to a woman who claims R. Kelly sexually assaulted her hundreds of times before she turned 18 years old, cooperating with federal investigators who were looking into the singer's alleged child abuse was something she agonised over several years ago but ultimately decided to do because she didn't want to "carry his lies."
The witness, who is now 37 years old and uses the alias "Jane" in court, said that even after she started cooperating, she had once misled federal authorities when she claimed she wasn't sure if Kelly had assaulted other youngsters. She said that she lied in order to protect others from embarrassment.
In her lengthy testimony on Thursday, Jane claimed that she and Kelly were in the videotape that was the centrepiece of his 2008 child pornography trial, which resulted in his acquittal. She added that before she was 18, Kelly had assaulted her sexually hundreds of times starting in the late 1990s. Kelly, who is now 55, was about 30 years old back then.
After Jane testified the day before about how Kelly pursued her sexually beginning when she was around 14 years old, Kelly's lead attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, attempted to present the imprisoned R&B singer in a more favourable light during Friday's cross-examination of Jane.
Kelly has been the subject of several complaints and accusations regarding his sexual behaviour throughout the years. Following the 2019 release of the Lifetime television docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, the scrutiny increased amid the #MeToo period.
When questioned, Jane claimed that she had been in a relationship with Kelly for 12 years and had remained so until she was 26 years old. Bonjean asked, “after you broke up, you cared about him and he cared about you?” Jane said that was true.
Jane revealed publicly for the first time on Thursday that Kelly was the man and that she was the girl in the 2008 trial's pivotal videotape. She claimed that when it was shot, she was around 14 years old.
The girl, who was at that time an adult, didn't testify, so several of the jurors said they had no choice but to acquit Kelly. On the stand on Thursday, Jane admitted that, in 2002, when she claimed she wasn't on the tape, she lied to a grand jury. She claimed she did it out of embarrassment and fear that "something awful might happen" to Kelly.
Jane claimed that she was home-schooled because she was a member of a travelling musical ensemble when she was around 12 years old and came from a musical family in a Chicago suburb. She claimed that Kelly was a mentor to her and an inspiration to her and that she asked him to be her godfather when she was 13 after getting to know him through an aunt who worked with him. Within a few weeks, Kelly would call and make lewd comments, she claimed. When they initially had sex, she claimed to be 15 years old to the jury.
She recalled how, in the early 2000s, her parents confronted Kelly about whether or not he was having sex with their daughter. Jane said that Kelly knelt down and asked her parents' pardon. Later, she claimed, she begged her parents not to do anything that would put Kelly in jeopardy while announcing her love for him.
Kelly, who ascended from poverty on Chicago's South Side to fame as a singer, songwriter, and producer, is accused of plotting to rig the 2008 trial because he understood that a conviction would, in effect, put an end to his life as he knew it.
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