CPD PROBED ANOTHER SEX ASSAULT CLAIM VS. R. KELLY
Records show cops investigated allegation that dates back to 2008 — just weeks after R&B superstar beat child porn charges
The Chicago Police Department investigated a claim of criminal sexual assault against R. Kelly that dates back to 2008, but no charges will be filed because the alleged incident occurred outside the statute of limitations, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
Police records show that detectives investigated an alleged criminal sexual assault that reportedly occurred on July 1, 2008, in the 200 block of North Justine — the same block where Kelly rented a recording studio space.
The alleged assault occurred less than three weeks after Kelly was acquitted of child pornography charges.
The Sun-Times submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to police seeking records related to the 2008 case, though that request was denied on Monday. The police department cited an ongoing investigation as the reason for its denial.
“While responsive records were identified, disclosing these records would adversely impact an ongoing Chicago Police Department investigation,” CPD officials said in the denial letter.
However, the department confirmed in the letter that the records pertained to a case involving “high profile offender Robert Kelly who is known as R. Kelly.”
Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Tuesday that the allegation was investigated but that the statute of limitations for prosecuting it had expired. A spokeswoman for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
The alleged victim’s age in the 2008 case was not made public, but in Illinois, a victim of a criminal sexual assault who is an adult must report an attack to law enforcement within three years of its occurrence for it to be prosecuted. If it is reported in that time frame, prosecutors have up to 10 years to bring charges. There is no statute of limitations in sexual assault cases if the victim is under 18 years old.
It was not immediately clear when the CPD’s investigation was initiated.
Last month, Kelly was charged with 10 counts of criminal sexual abuse. Those incidents, prosecutors allege, involved four victims and occurred from May 1998 to September 2001, once in February 2003 and from May 2009 to January 2010.
Kelly’s attorney, Steve Greenberg, did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday, though he has repeatedly said his client is innocent of the charges against him.
Darrell Johnson, Kelly’s publicist, was not aware of the investigation of the 2008 case until a Sun-Times reporter contacted him Tuesday, though he cast doubt on its veracity, pointing out that prosecutors didn’t include it in the case filed recently.
“Why wouldn’t they make it part of their indictment?” Johnson said. “Why would you leave out the 2008 case? That makes no sense.”
More details revealed of charges
The Sun-Times also reviewed Kelly’s arrest report that was generated after the embattled R&B star was taken into Chicago police custody last month. The report contains more details of two alleged abuses that lead to Kelly being charged.
The alleged abuse that took place in February 2003 occurred in the 800 block of North Larrabee — the same block where Kelly maintained another recording studio. The alleged victim, who was referred to in court papers as “L.C.” and who the Sun-Times is not naming, was not a minor at the time.
The state’s attorney’s office gave scant details of the alleged incident when Kelly was charged last month, saying that the singer “transmitted his semen onto L.C.’s body, for the purpose of Robert Kelly’s or L.C.’s sexual gratification or arousal, by the use of force or threat of force.”
Kelly’s arrest report also states that the singer “had asked her to massage his head for him, [when] he pulled her head down toward his penis by grabbing her hair and he began to masturbate his penis and ejaculated and spit on her face.”
The other incidents mentioned in Kelly’s arrest report relate to another one of the four people he’s charged with sexually abusing. The alleged victim, identified as “H.W.” by prosecutors, was 16 years old at the time.
The state’s attorney’s office last month said that the abuses of H.W. occurred between May 26, 1998, and May 25, 1999. Over that year, according to prosecutors, Kelly “knowingly committed an act of sexual penetration upon H.W., to wit: contact between Robert Kelly’s penis and H.W.’s mouth.”
The arrest report further states that “offender had, on multiple occasions, inserted his penis inside her vagina, touched her breasts with his mouth and hands, inserted his penis inside of her mouth and would masturbate his penis in front of her.”
One day before Kelly was charged, a civil lawsuit was filed against him in Cook County Circuit Court by a woman with the same initials who now lives in Michigan.
She alleges that she met Kelly on May 26, 1998, as she was walking down a street in Chicago. Kelly saw her walking, pulled his car over and talked to her, the suit states.
Later that day, an associate of Kelly’s met with her and her family at a restaurant and gave Kelly’s phone number to the girl. The associate “indicated that the defendant wanted to speak with the minor plaintiff and have her come to his studio and be in a video that he was making,” the suit states.
She was “star struck and wanted to meet with defendant to pursue a role in what she believed was a music video,” the suit states.
The sexual abuse started within a month, the complaint alleges.
“Commencing in or about June 1998 and thereafter until she was of the age of majority, defendant, Robert Sylvester Kelly, sexually abused plaintiff,” the suit states. “Specifically, defendant, Robert Sylvester Kelly, had sexual intercourse with the minor plaintiff. The defendant also engaged in oral sex with the minor plaintiff. During these repeated incidents, defendant represented to the minor plaintiff that this behavior was appropriate.”