R. Kelly placed on suicide watch at Brooklyn jail

Kelly’s lawyer says she will file to request jail’s rationale for decision

NEW YORK — R. Kelly has been placed on suicide watch at Brooklyn’s federal jail following his 30-year sentence for sex trafficking — and his lawyer says the disgraced R&B star has no business being there.

The 55-year-old has been alone in a cell at the Metropolitan Detention Complex since his sentencing Wednesday for a 25-year scheme in which he sexually and mentally abused fans and other young women.

Kelly’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjean told the Daily News he had prepared himself mentally for the steep prison term imposed by Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Ann Donnelly and was content in the general population.

“He was absolutely fine. He had adjusted just fine. The rankand-file correctional officers understand this. They deal with him. This is higher-up policy that is deplorable,” said Bonjean, who planned to file papers Friday requesting MDC’s rationale.

“They admit that his highprofile nature is one of the considerations. I’m sorry, where is the data that someone who is high profile is more likely to hurt himself? Other than the isolated Jeffrey Epstein incident, I don’t know what their data is to support anything like that,” she said.

Kelly’s complaints are similar to those of another high-profile inmate at the jail on the Sunset Park waterfront: Ghislaine Maxwell. The British former socialite, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday, has complained she’s been put on suicide watch repeatedly without justification.

A source said Friday morning that Maxwell, 60, remained on suicide watch.

Maxwell’s lawyer Bobbi Sternheim said MDC officials had subjected Epstein’s chief enabler to an “unusually harsh and punishing” term of pretrial incarceration. She said her client spent almost two years alone on suicide watch despite showing no signs of self-harm. Maxwell’s lawyers complained repeatedly she was subjected to repeated invasive searches, monitored by a jail staffer with a camera and had a flashlight shown in her light overnight every 15 minutes, preventing her from sleeping.

“It is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein,” Maxwell said in court. “I have had plenty of time to think, having spent two years in solitary confinement.”

Maxwell lured teenagers as young as 14 into Epstein’s orbit beginning in the 1990s, preparing them for his repeated sexual abuse.