R. Kelly sex abuse trial gets underway in NYC
NEW YORK — R&B star R. Kelly is a predator who lured girls, boys and young women with his fame and dominated them physically, sexually and psychologically, a prosecutor said Wednesday, while a defense lawyer warned jurors they’ll have to sift through lies from accusers with agendas to find the truth.
The differing perspectives came as the long-anticipated trial began unfolding in a Brooklyn courtroom where several accusers were expected to testify in the next month about the Grammy-winning, multiplatinum-selling singer whose career has been derailed by charges that have left him jailed as he goes broke.
“This case is not about a celebrity who likes to party a lot,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Cruz Melendez told the jury as she explained the evidence to be revealed at his federal trial. “This case is about a predator.”
She said he distributed backstage passes to entice children and women to join him, sometimes at his home or studio, where he then “dominated and controlled them physically, sexually and psychologically.”
The prosecutor said Kelly would often record sex acts with minors as he controlled a racketeering enterprise of individuals who were loyal and devoted to him, eager to “fulfill each and every one of the defendant’s wishes and demands.”
But Kelly’s attorney, Nicole Blank Becker, portrayed her client as a victim of women, some of whom enjoyed the “notoriety of being able to tell their friends that they were with a superstar.”
Kelly, 54, is perhaps best known for his 1996 smash hit “I Believe I Can Fly.”
The openings came more than a decade after Kelly was acquitted in a 2008 child pornography case in Chicago.