Caught in the act
Dancer sez she walked in on Kelly & Aaliyah
A dancer for R. Kelly testified Monday that she walked in on the R&B superstar as he was in the midst of a sex act with Aaliyah, who was underage.
The woman, who was also a minor at the time, said she was looking to pull a prank on Kelly aboard his tour bus outside Washington, D.C.,in the early 1990s. But when she opened the door to a backroom of the bus, she was shocked to see the two singers.
“I saw Robert and Aaliyah in a sexual situation,” said the woman, who was identified as Angela on the stand. Aaliyah would have been no older than 14 at the time.
“He was on his knees,” she testified.
Angela said she “abruptly” closed the door after seeing the pedophilic act.
Kelly also had sex with Angela, she testified, beginning when she was about 15 and between her freshman and sophomore years of high school.
Angela worked as a backup dancer for Kelly on tour. Sex with the “I Believe I Can Fly” singer, she said, was part of the gig.
“He told us we had to pay our dues. It was a requirement to be around,” she said.
Angela testified that she and a few other girls who worked for Kelly met Aaliyah in 1992 — on Aaliyah’s 12th birthday. Kelly told them that they would be Aaliyah’s backup singers as she recorded her debut album, “Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number,” which Kelly produced.
Kelly married Aaliyah in 1994 when she was 15, according to numerous witnesses. The “Princess of R&B” died in a plane crash in 2001.
The 54-year-old “Ignition” singer is accused in Brooklyn Federal Court of running a scheme targeting underage girls and young women for illegal sex. The trial has been underway for more than a month.
Witnesses have testified that Kelly kept many girls and women trapped in rooms for days. They allegedly had to request permission to eat or use the bathroom. He demanded they call him “Daddy” and did not allow them to look at other men, accusers say.
Kelly also made a man, who goes by Alex, allegedly have sex with many of his girlfriends. Alex briefly took the stand, testifying that Kelly’s women and girls were “zombie-ish” during sexual encounters.
A former employee also testified that Kelly made her change into a robe to prove she wasn’t recording their conversation as his world crumbled around him in 2019.
Diana Copeland, who worked as an executive assistant for Kelly for 14 years had already quit her job when the singer summoned her in 2019 to Trump Tower in Chicago, she said.
Rumors about his treatment of women and girls were swirling, fueled by the recent release of the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly.”
She was greeted at the luxury apartment by a woman identified in court as Jane, who at the time was dating the singer.
“Jane gave me a robe to put on. She asked me was I wired ... if I had some type of device that would record,” Copeland recalled. “I was shocked and I said no.”
While Copeland did not take off everything, she removed her sweatshirt and draped the robe over her tank top.
She said she was not wearing a wire and could not remember if she had spoken to prosecutors before meeting Kelly that day.
Prosecutors now consider Jane one of Kelly’s victims.