This archive report was first published on 17 July 2019.
On July 17, 2019, a federal indictment was unsealed, accusing R. Kelly of paying a girl and her father to stay quiet about a sex tape that showed him having sex with and urinating on the girl, who was barely a teenager at the time.
The tape was sold as a bootleg on the streets of New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and was shown at Kelly's child pornography trial in 2008. However, the girl and her immediate family refused to testify, which was seen as crucial to the decision to acquit him.
But in a dramatic turn of events, a lawyer for the girl, now a woman in her 30s, said on Tuesday that she was cooperating with federal investigators. The extent of her cooperation was not immediately clear, but the statement from her lawyer, Christopher L. Brown, came just days after Kelly was accused of paying the girl and her father to stay quiet, and in some cases to lie to investigators to protect him.
Kelly is now facing numerous state and federal charges, including sexual assault, obstruction of justice, child pornography, and racketeering. Prosecutors said he had victimized 12 women, at least eight of whom were underage at the time of the incidents.
On Tuesday, Kelly stood in a federal courtroom in Chicago in an orange jumpsuit and ankle shackles and pleaded not guilty. A federal judge ordered him kept in jail without bond, calling the case 'extraordinarily serious.'
Angel Krull, a federal prosecutor, said that if convicted, Kelly would face a maximum of 195 years in prison and that investigators had 'identified many more girls' beyond the 12 that he may have abused.
