R. Kelly held on federal sex-crime charges
Embattled R&B singer R. Kelly was arrested Thursday night in Chicago on new federal sexcrime charges, just months after he was charged at the state level with abuse and aggravated sexual assault.
The 13-count indictment, brought by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois, includes charges of child pornography, enticing a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity and obstruction of justice, Joseph Fitzpatrick, an assistant United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, told The Washington Post.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn unsealed a separate fivecount indictment against Kelly on Friday, accusing Kelly of, among other things, leading a racketeering enterprise for two decades — dating from 1999 and continuing as recently as February 2018.
According to a letter filed by Richard Donoghue, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, with the court Friday, Kelly participated during that time in “the sexual exploitation of children, coercing and transporting women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity, kidnapping and forced labor.”
For years, his staff — managers, bodyguards, drivers and personal assistants — recruited women and underage girls as sexual partners for Kelly, according to the indictment. The indictment says employees sometimes found these girls at Kelly’s concerts and invited them backstage; other times the singer flew them across the country to meet him on tour. Often, prosecutors say, the sexual activity was filmed and photographed.
Kelly, according to the indictment, had “rules”: the girls were to call him “Daddy;” they weren’t allowed to leave their rooms to eat or go to the bathroom without his permission; they had to wear baggy clothing when not going with him to an event; and they were instructed to keep their heads down and were forbidden from looking at other men.
The indictment specifically details the abuse of five unnamed girls and women, three of whom were minors at the time. One alleged she was locked in a room for three days without food. When an employee eventually fed her, she became tired and dizzy and woke up with Kelly in the bedroom “under circumstances that made clear he had sexually assaulted her while she was unconscious,” Donoghue said. Another accused Kelly of having unprotected sex without divulging he had an infectious venereal disease. And a 16-year-old victim claimed Kelly physically abused her when she “disobeyed his sexual directives, including slapping, choking, and isolating her in rooms for days at a time with no access to food.”
If convicted on all counts, Kelly faces decades in prison. He was arraigned in federal court in Chicago on Friday.
In addition to Kelly, two of his former employees — Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown — were charged in the Chicago case with conspiracy to receive child pornography. McDavid was also charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Steve Greenberg, Kelly’s attorney, said in a statement Friday that the singer was aware of the investigations and the charges were not a surprise. “He and his lawyers look forward to his day in court, to the truth coming out and to his vindication from what has been an unprecedented assault by others for their own personal gain.”