Accuser: R. Kelly made me dress like Girl Scout
NEW YORK — Jerhonda Pace was only 16, but R. Kelly, the superstar singer who was having sex with her, wanted her to dress even younger, Pace told jurors Thursday.
“He wanted me to put my hair up in pigtails and dress like a Girl Scout,” said Pace, 28, the first of Kelly’s accusers to testify at the R&B artist’s criminal trial. She said Kelly often requested the outfit before filming their sexual interactions with a camera on a tripod.
Her testimony in Federal District Court in Brooklyn this week marked the first time that one of Kelly’s alleged victims has taken the stand in a criminal case over the decades of allegations around him.
Over the course of the trial that began Wednesday and is set to last for four weeks, several accusers are expected to testify firsthand about alleged sexual, physical and psychological abuse inflicted by Kelly, 54 — and about the roles that members of his inner circle played in maintaining that system of torment, all while the R&B singer was at the pinnacle of his career.
Pace testified that Kelly had sex with her over six months beginning in 2009, shortly after she turned 16. She testified that she initially had told Kelly that she was 19, but after he performed a sex act on her, she revealed her true age and that she was a virgin.
That didn’t deter Kelly’s interest in her, she said. He engaged in sexual acts and intercourse with her during several visits to his home in a Chicago-area suburb, she said, where she was forced to operate under severe restrictions and eventually faced violent abuse.
She wept when a prosecutor asked her to read aloud from a journal entry describing how he allegedly beat and choked her the last time they were together in 2010.
Pace read how Kelly cursed at her and slapped her three times, telling her, “It’s not going to be an open fist next time.” She wrote that he choked her and sexually assaulted her before she “became fed up with him” and left.
The witness, who’s pregnant and only a few days from her due date, asked for a break so she could compose herself.
On cross examination, defense attorney Deveraux Cannick sought to show Pace hid her true motivations regarding Kelly and deceived him by lying about her age.
“You were in fact stalking him, right?” Cannick asked.
“That is not right,” she responded.
Cannick also confronted her with a lawsuit settlement she signed indicating she agreed she never revealed to Kelly that she was a minor. She said it was in exchange for hush money.
To bolster their claims against Kelly, prosecutors showed jurors screenshots from Pace’s phone showing several communications with Kelly in January 2010, including a text from him reading, “Please call.” There was also a photo of her with “Rob” tattooed to her chest. She said she’s since “covered it up with a black heart.”