By: Sung Hae -Media Reporter PUBLISHED: SEP 28, 2021
R&B singer R. Kelly has been found guilty of charges including sexual exploitation of a child, bribery, racketeering and sex trafficking involving five victims.
The jury found that the prosecutors had proved 12 of 14 alleged acts associated with racketeering charge, which involved five victims: the singer Aaliyah as well as women named Stephanie, Jerhonda Pace, Jane and Faith. Two acts associated with an alleged victim named Sonja were not proved. (Most alleged victims went by their first names or pseudonyms.) The prosecutors needed proof of only two of the racketeering acts for a guilty charge.
"Kelly had been the head of a criminal enterprise whose purpose was to lure girls, boys and women to the R&B singer for his sexual gratification," ruled the jury. Kelly will face a second federal trial on charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice in Illinois. Most of those accusations are related to a 2008 child pornography trial in Chicago in which he was acquitted of all charges.
Kelly also faces criminal charges in both Cook County, Ill., where he was indicted by the state attorney in February 2019 for aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four victims (three of them minors), and in Minnesota, where Kelly was charged in August 2019 with engaging in prostitution with a minor.
Sentencing in New York is scheduled for May 4, 2022.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, call the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit online.rainn.org.
California/ R. Kelly/ News