R. Kelly, already serving 30 years for sex trafficking, sentenced to 20 years in federal child porn case

By Eric Levenson and Bill Kirkos, CNN

Disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison in a Chicago federal courtroom Thursday following his conviction last year on charges of child pornography and enticement of a minor, his second such lengthy sentencing in the past year.

Kelly, 56, is already serving a 30-year prison term for his 2021 conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York federal court.

US District Judge Harry D. Leinenweber said in court Thursday that 19 years of the 20-year prison sentence would be served concurrently, or at the same time as his other sentence. One year would be served consecutively, or after that sentence is complete, he said.

Kelly was convicted in September on three counts of production of child pornography and three counts of enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity. A motion for a new trial was denied last week.

Prior to the sentence, attorney Christopher Brown read from a statement given by one of Kelly’s victims, identified as “Jane.”

“I have lost my dignity due to Robert Kelly. I have lost my dreams due to Robert Kelly. I have lost my teenage years to Robert Kelly,” he read.

She wrote that Kelly was “abusive and dominating” and made her suicidal.

“I will forever be the girl that R Kelly peed on,” Jane said through the attorney, referencing the infamous sex tape video shown during his trial which showed Kelly urinating on a victim.

The sentencing hearing is the culmination of nearly three decades of allegations Kelly had sexually abused underage girls, accusations first laid out in the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2002, Kelly was indicted on child pornography charges for allegedly videotaping himself having sex with an unidentified underage girl, but he was acquitted in 2008.

Through the allegations, Kelly was one of the most successful R&B artists of the 1990s and 2000s, known for hit songs “Bump N’ Grind,” “Ignition (Remix)” and “I Believe I Can Fly,” which won him three Grammy Awards. He has been nominated for 26 Grammy Awards in all, including as recently as 2015.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, Kelly faced further allegations of wrongdoing in a 2017 BuzzFeed article and in the January 2019 Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly.” A month later, he was indicted in Cook County, Illinois, on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse, and two federal indictments followed in July 2019.

Prosecutors had asked for 25-year sentence

Prosecutors had asked for a 25-year sentence to be served once his other 30-year prison sentence is complete.

“Robert Kelly is a serial sexual predator who, over the course of many years, specifically targeted young girls and went to great lengths to conceal his abuse of Jane and other minor victims,” prosecutors said in a filing. “To this day, and even following the jury verdict against him, Kelly refuses to accept responsibility for his crimes.”

The defense said in its filing Kelly is already serving a “de facto life sentence” and asked for any sentence be served at the same time as his 30-year sentence in the New York case.

“In the unlikely event that Kelly was to survive his 30-year sentence, there is no reason to believe he would reoffend as a geriatric in his mid-80s,” his attorneys wrote. “The overwhelming majority of Kelly’s criminal conduct was committed a quarter century ago.”

The advisory sentencing guidelines offer a range of 14 to 17.5 years in prison, according to the prosecution’s calculations, or 11.25 to 14 years in prison, according to the defense’s calculations.

The question of whether the two sentences will be served consecutively or concurrently was up to the court’s discretion.

What happened at the trials

The federal trial in Chicago last September was based on allegations from five minors who prosecutors allege were abused by Kelly in the late 1990s by making explicit videos with four of them.

One of the witnesses in the trial, a 37-year-old woman, spoke in federal court under the pseudonym Jane and testified Kelly began engaging in sex acts with her when she was 14 and had sex with her starting when she was 15. They had sex “hundreds” of times before she turned 18, she said.

She testified that she falsely denied they had a sexual relationship in interviews with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Chicago police investigators and to a grand jury in 2002.

“Why were you untruthful?” a prosecutor asked Jane in court.

“Because I was afraid to expose Robert. Because I was afraid of what might happen to my parents,” she said. “I also did not want that person to be me.”

The jury convicted Kelly of six charges, including three counts of producing videos depicting sexual conduct with Jane and three counts of enticing Jane and two other minors to engage in sexual activity. He was acquitted on seven other counts, including conspiracy to obstruct justice. Two associates were acquitted of all charges.

At the time of the Chicago federal trial, Kelly had already been convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking in a New York federal trial.

In that case, prosecutors from the Eastern District of New York accused Kelly of using his status as a celebrity and a “network of people at his disposal to target girls, boys and young women for his own sexual gratification.”

The New York trial included testimony from witnesses who said they were sexually and physically abused by Kelly. The court also heard from people involved with orchestrating Kelly’s 1994 marriage to the late singer Aaliyah when she was just 15 years old and he was an adult after she believed she’d gotten pregnant.

Last month, prosecutors in Cook County, Illinois, dropped state sex-crime charges against Kelly, citing in part his lengthy federal sentence.

“I understand how hard it was for these victims to come forward and tell their stories. I applaud their courage and have the utmost respect for everyone who came forward,” Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx said in a news release. “While this may not be the result they were expecting, due to the sentences that Mr. Kelly is facing, we do feel that justice has been served.”

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CNN’s Sonia Moghe and Dakin Andone contributed to this report.