CHICAGO (AP) — Two more accusers testified Monday at R. Kelly’s child pornography and solicitation trial, bringing the total number of accusers who have testified so far at the federal trial in Chicago to three.
The first accuser, who testified two weeks ago under the pseudonym ‘Jane’, is critical of another of the charges – that the R&B singer managed to rig his 2008 state child pornography trial by threatening witnesses and concealing video evidence.
Kelly, 55, was sentenced in June to 30 years in prison by a federal judge in New York on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.
In total, the prosecution named five accusers in pretrial filings, although it is unclear whether the remaining two accusers will testify before the government rests this week. The trial was to last a month and end in mid-September.
An accuser who used the pseudonym ‘Pauline’ told jurors on Monday that she was a classmate of Jane’s and that Jane introduced her to Kelly in 1998 when they were 14 and Kelly was around 30 year.
While at Kelly’s house in Chicago later that year, Pauline said she was surprised to come across Kelly and a naked Jane in a basement. She said Kelly told her that “we all have secrets” and that it’s “our secret”.
Pauline repeatedly told jurors that she loved Kelly. But, as a 37-year-old mother, she said she now had a different perspective.
“If someone has done something to my children, I kill them. Period,” she said.
Kelly sexually assaulted her more than 100 times, starting when she was 14, and they had their first sex when she was 15, she testified.
In cross-examination, Kelly’s lead attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, accused Pauline of being vague about the number of times she had sex with Kelly when she was underage.
“Whether it’s once or twice, what’s wrong is wrong,” retorted Pauline.
The second accuser to testify on Monday, called only Tracy, said she was introduced to Kelly when she was 16 by a boss at a record company she was interning for in 1998. Tracy told the swore that she had repeatedly rebuffed Kelly’s advances.
In a room in Kelly’s Chicago studio, she remembers telling him after he started pulling her closer to him, “You know I’m 16?” Minutes later, when he “exposed himself…I tried to back off but he had my shirt on,” Tracy testified.
On another occasion, she described Kelly walking into a hotel room where Tracy was staying and yelling at her for wearing clothes under her bathrobe.
“I told him I didn’t want to have sex,” she testified.
But she said Kelly ordered her to get into bed with him anyway and on several occasions she used force to sexually assault him. She said she first had sex with Kelly when she was 16, then dozens of times when she was 17 and 18.
Tracy started crying on the stand on Monday as she began to tell jurors about the day Kelly walked into a room where Tracy was waiting. Kelly arrived with Jane.
“I was really confused and really angry,” she recalled. “I didn’t really think there was anyone other than me and Rob.”
Kelly’s 2008 trial revolved around a video that state prosecutors said showed Kelly abusing Jane. But after acquitting Kelly in 2008, jurors said they had no choice because the girl did not testify at that trial.
Jane testified in the ongoing trial, saying she was the child in the video and Kelly was the grown man.
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