54-year-old Robert Sylvester Kelly, aka R Kelly, was found guilty of all NINE counts of racketeering and sex trafficking

The six-week long trial at Brooklyn Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn, NY, featured graphic testimony from 50 witnesses

The victims were mostly women and girls, but included at lest one male victim, who while not listed as a complainant, testified against Kelly

Kelly was accused of running a Chicago-based criminal enterprise that prosecutors say he used to ‘target, groom and exploit girls, boys and women’ for unwanted sex and mental torment

Witnesses cataloged Kelly subjecting them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage Prosecutors say Kelly orchestrated a sex crimes ring for nearly three decades

Prosecutors argued that Kelly’s accusers were ‘indoctrinated’ into his world, groomed for sex and kept in line ‘coercive means of control’ including isolation and cruel disciplinarily measures

He is also accused of knowingly giving herpes to some of his victims, which is a crime in some states

The defense, however, argued that his accusers lied in their testimonies and that Kelly was a ‘sex symbol’ and ‘playboy’ who was being attacked by scorned exes and money-hungry fans

The singer who opted not testify in his own defense, maintains his innocence and denies any wrongdoing 

He faces between 10 years and life in prison after his conviction

Kelly also faces separate criminal charges in federal court in Chicago, and state charges in Illinois and Minnesota

R. Kelly was found guilty of all nine counts of racketeering and sex trafficking by a federal jury on Monday during his sex trafficking trial where prosecutors accused the R&B singer of exploiting his stardom over a quarter-century to lure women and underage girls into his orbit for sex. 
A jury of seven men and five women reached the verdict after two days of deliberation and a six-week long trial featuring lurid testimony.
The federal prosecutors constructed a sweeping racketeering case, with evidence that extends from recent years back to the early 1990s, portray the Kelly as the kingpin of a decades-long criminal enterprise that recruited women and girls for sex.
The singer was also charged with eight violations of the Mann Act, an interstate anti-sex trafficking law.
Prosecutors say Kelly orchestrated a sex crimes ring for nearly three decades. 
He faces between 10 years and life in prison. 
The jury began deliberating federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges against the superstar on Friday in Brooklyn, after prosecutors and defense attorneys finished their closing arguments, with a simple appeal to the jury, “Convict him”.

Robert Sylvester Kelly, 54, was accused of running a Chicago-based criminal enterprise that prosecutors say he used to ‘target, groom and exploit girls, boys and women’ for unwanted sex and mental torment.
The witnesses said Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage.
He has denied any wrongdoing.
The guilty verdict follows 21 days of evidence including 50 witnesses and hours of wrenching testimony.
To convict Kelly on racketeering, jurors had to find him guilty of at least two of 14 ‘predicate acts’ — the crimes elemental to the wider pattern of illegal wrongdoing.  
Disturbing testimony intended to prove those acts included accusations of rape, drugging, imprisonment and child pornography.
He was also charged with multiple violations of the Mann Act, which makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines ‘for any immoral purpose.’
Throughout the trial, prosecutors argued that Kelly’s accusers were ‘indoctrinated’ into his world, groomed for sex and kept in line by ‘coercive means of control’ including isolation and cruel disciplinarily measures. 
They argued that Kelly, with the help of members of his entourage, used tactics from ‘the predator playbook’ to sexually exploit his victims.
‘The defendant set rules, lots of them, and he demanded complete obedience,’ Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Geddes said during closing statements Wednesday. That meant ‘for many years what happened in the defendant’s world stayed in the defendant´s world. But no longer.’ 
Many of his accusers shared stories in the same vein. – They met the Kelly at concerts or mall performances, and were handed slips of paper with Kelly’s contact by his entourage. 
Several said they were told he could help them achieve careers in the music industry. 

The singer did not testify in his own defense during the trial, likely to avoid a damaging cross-examination. 
The defense, however, argued that his accusers lied in their testimonies and that Kelly was a ‘sex symbol’ and ‘playboy’ who was being attacked by scorned exes and money-hungry fans. 
Defense attorney Deveraux Cannick told the jury there was no evidence Kelly’s accusers were ever forced to do anything against their will. 
He also noted that the accusers — also known as Kelly’s girlfriends — maintained a relationship with him because he spoiled them with travel, shopping sprees and five-star dining and other luxuries. 
‘He gave them a lavish lifestyle,’ he said. ‘That’s not what a predator is supposed to do.’ 
Kelly’s trial centered around six women: Jerhonda, Stephanie, Faith, Sonja and a woman who testified under a pseudonym, along with the R&B star Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001. 

The list of complainants was headed by Aaliyah Dana Haughton who was listed as Jane Doe #1
Jane Doe #1 in Kelly’s racketeering indictment has been identified as late singer Aaliyah Dana Haughton, aka Aaliyah.
Aaliyah, whose full name was Aaliyah Dana Haughton, worked with Kelly, who wrote and produced her 1994 debut album, ‘Age Ain´t Nothing But A Number.’
Kelly married Aaliyah when she was just 15 in a 10-minute ceremony held inside a Chicago hotel room.
Pastor Nathan Edmond testified that he was recruited to marry Kelly, who was aged 27 at the time, after he was shown a falsified document that stated Aaliyah was 18. 
Late last month, Kelly’s former tour manager, Demetrius Smith, testified to the same court that he bribed a government worker with $500 to obtain Aaliyah’s fake ID so that Kelly could marry her. 
During the trial, a witness also recounted how she walked in on ‘Robert and Aaliyah in a sexual situation.’
According to the testimony, Kelly was kneeling before the teenage singer and his head was between her legs. The witness said she then abruptly shut the door and never spoke to Kelly about what she allegedly witnessed.
Aaliyah was about 13 years old at the time of the alleged encounter. The singer was killed in a plane crash in 2001 when she was 22 years old.
Stephanie (Jane Doe #2)
Kelly allegedly met Jane Doe #2, only identified as Stephanie, in 1999 when she was 16 years old after a member of his staff approached her at a fast food restaurant in Chicago.
The singer reportedly filmed them having sex multiple times, creating child pornography.
Stephanie also described being told to call Kelly ‘Daddy’ and ordered not to speak to other men when with him
Sonja (Jane Doe #3)
Sonja, met Kelly outside of an Illinois mall in 2003 or 2004 while she was interning at a radio station.
She claimed the star locked her in a studio for days without food and water before sexually assaulting her when she was unconscious. 
Sonja says after the alleged assault she was made to sign a NDA and that Kelly’s associates threatened her to stay quiet about what happened in the studio. 

Jerhonda Pace (Jane Doe #4)
Jerhonda Pace, a 16-year-old virgin at the time, had a six-month long relationship with Kelly beginning in May 2009.
She alleged that Kelly forced her to go three days without using the bathroom and demanded she dress like a Girl Scout and wear her hair in pigtails during sex.
He reportedly took videos and photos of her engaging in sex with himself and others. He would also slap and choke her, as well as isolate her in rooms alone when she ‘disobyed’ him.
Pace claims Kelly told her that she and her family would suffer if she did not perform sexual acts on him. 
Sonja (Jane Doe #3)

Azriel Clary (Jane Doe #5)
Azriel Clary moved in with Kelly at his Trump Tower residence when she was just 17.
Prosecutors say Kelly had sex with her in April, May, September and October of 2015 when she was underage.
Clary claimed she suffered through a five-year relationship with the R&B singer and he forced her to have an abortion as part of his controlling behavior.
She alleged that the singer regularly checked her cellphone to make sure she did not gossip to friends about their relationship.
She claimed Kelly ‘chastised’ her for disobedience, including by spanking her hard enough to leave bruises and tear her skin.
Clary had infamously accused her parents Alice and Angelo Clary of pimping her out to the singer in a CBS interview in March 2019. 
Faith (Jane Doe #6)
Kelly met Jane Doe #6, identified only as Faith, in May 2017 when she was 19 after allegedly having an assistant arrange for her to attend his concert in New York. 
He is accused of showing up at her hotel room and having sex with her without a condom and failing to tell her he had herpes.
They also allegedly had sexual encounters in January and February 2018.
Prosecutors called 45 witnesses to the stand since the trial began in federal court in Brooklyn on August 18, though their testimony is not part of the charges.
They included several female and two male accusers to back up allegations that Kelly used a cadre of managers, bodyguards and assistants to systematically recruit potential victims at his shows, malls and fast-food restaurants where he hung out.
The accusers testified that once they were in Kelly’s orbit, he groomed them for unwanted sex and psychological torment – mostly when they were teenagers – in episodes dating to the 1990s. 
The accusers’ searing accounts were supported at least in part by other former Kelly employees whose own testimony suggested they were essentially paid off to look the other way or enable the recording artist.
Audio and other recordings were also shared in the courtroom.
The prosecution says the footage showed his violent threats to his victims where he can be heard telling one woman that he will ‘f*** her up’ if she ‘lie[s]’ to him’ and another that he will come to her home state to make ‘something happen to [her]’ if she ever ‘takes from [him] again’.
The tapes demonstrate his pattern of violently threatening his victims, prosecutors said.  

in another instance, the defendant is captured on another recording berating a woman – Jane Doe – from Florida he accused of stealing a Rolex watch from him, the court filing said.
‘You better not ever… take from me again or I will be in Florida and something will happen to you,’ he said. ‘You understand what I’m telling you?’
In court filings, prosecutors said that they had planned to call the Florida woman as a witness but decided against it after she ‘started to have panic attacks and appeared to have an emotional breakdown’ while listening to the tape in preparation for her testimony.
The defendant bragged about having ‘cameras everywhere’ in his Chicago studio and other locations he used to keep an eye on his victims, it added.
The singer’s accusers were finally able to testify against him last month after their hush-money NDAs, which paid up to $1.5million each in exchange for their silence, were overturned by a Brooklyn judge. 

Many of his accusers shared stories echoing the same modus operandi – they met the singer at concerts or mall performances, and were handed slips of paper with Kelly’s contact by his entourage.
R. Kelly was the object of social media mockery on Sunday amid a Celebrity Net Worth estimate that his ‘net worth is negative $2 million’ with his ongoing legal problems, which seemed to tie into the prosecution assertion that Kelly suppressed allegations against him for years by pressuring accusers into signing non-disclosure agreements in exchange for cash settlements.
The NDA settlements were overseen by Susan E. Loggans, a personal-injury attorney. 
Prosecutors in Kelly’s trial argued that NDAs should not keep victims from speaking out and referred to four other federal cases, including a ruling against Bill Cosby in 2016 when he sued one of his victims Andrea Constand for speaking with prosecutors. 
A Brooklyn judge agreed and overturned the NDAs clearing the way for two of his alleged victims to testify against Kelly.

One victim, Jane Doe No. 4 was the first witness to take the stand on August 18 and said Kelly allegedly began making sexual contact with her in 2009 when she was 16 and he was in his early 40s.  
Susan Loggans helped Jane Doe 4 reach a $1.5million settlement agreement with Kelly’s attorneys, in exchange for an NDA. 
Kelly had also been accused of knowingly spreading herpes to several of his victims, which is a crime in some states. 
The other alleged victim, Jane Doe No. 11, told the court she had a consensual sexual relationship with Kelly in 2001, as an adult, and that he knowingly gave her herpes. 
She reached a cash settlement with Kelly in 2004 in exchange for the NDA.
He’s also charged with that multiple violations of the Mann Act, an interstate anti-sex trafficking law which makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines ‘for any immoral purpose.’
Coincidentally, despite decades of sexual misconduct accusations, the New York case is only the second to result in a criminal trial. In the earlier case he was acquitted of a child pornography charge.
Kelly also faces separate criminal charges in federal court in Chicago, and state charges in Illinois and Minnesota.
The defendant pled not guilty to the racketeering charges. He maintains his innocence, vehemently denying the allegations, claiming that the accusers were groupies who wanted to take advantage of his fame and fortune until the #MeToo movement turned them against him.   

Kelly’s sex racketeering trial delayed over a year by the pandemic, is seen as landmark for the #MeToo movement as it is the first major sex abuse trial where the majority of accusers are Black women. 
Although most of his accusers were female, at least one male took the stand during Kelly’s racketeering trial.
Testifying under the pseudonym Louis, the complainant, speaking on August 30, alleged that Kelly  had a woman hidden under a boxing ring at his house ready to perform sexual acts on him.
He told the Brooklyn federal courtroom he was 17 when Kelly slipped him his phone number while the teenager was working the night shift at a McDonald’s drive-thru in suburban Chicago, near the R&B artist’s home.
After he and his parents attended a party at Kelly’s home, the singer told him ‘maybe it would be best sometime if I came to the party by myself,’ Louis told the court.
At one point, Louis said, he met Kelly at the star’s home and they proceeded to the detached garage, which had a boxing ring and a gym.
In his closing argument R. Kelly’s lawyer compared his figure to that of Martin Luther King, claiming that both men have fought to uphold the Constitution, before quoting King’s famous ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech during closing arguments in the R&B star’s sex-trafficking trial Thursday.
Kelly’s attorney started off by telling the jury the singer is fighting to hold the government to account the same way Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for rights guaranteed by the Constitution.     
Cannick said King led the civil rights movement in an effort to make the government ‘be true to what’s on paper’ and added ‘That’s all Robert is trying to do.’ 

‘This is a great country. Our Constitution is most sacred,’ Cannick said. ‘However, without people of good will, of a sense of fairness and courage, our Constitution would be nothing but hollow words.’
Quoting the civil rights activist’s ‘I’ve Been to the Mountaintop’ speech, Cannick told the jury the case is not just about the the accusations against the singer but about  injustice in the United States. He compared the backlash King faced during the civil rights to what the jurors were facing in coming to a decision that would clear Kelly of all charges. 
‘See, unlike Dr. King and those who were like-minded, you don’t have to worry about atrocities. You just have to be courageous and fair,’ he told the jury.  
Cannick also claimed that prosecutors encouraged witnesses to lie on the stand, and pushed a false narrative, the Post reported. 
‘He didn’t have to recruit women,’ Cannick said. ‘That’s the narrative they’re perpetuating.’ 
‘He asked me what I was willing to do for music,’ the witness said, describing the singer asking if he had ‘fantasies’ before performing oral sex on him.
He also described an episode of nonconsensual sex involving Louis and another person, saying Kelly ‘snapped his fingers’ before ‘a young lady came out from under the (boxing) ring.’
‘She crawled over to him’ before performing oral sex on both Kelly and Louis, the court heard.
‘It was uncomfortable,’ Louis said, describing another instance when he passed out from drinking at a party and woke up alone with the defendant, unsure whether they’d had a sexual encounter.
Louis, who met Kelly in 2006, said the singer told him to ‘keep it between me and him’ saying ‘we family now, we brothers.’
He said Kelly requested Louis call him ‘Daddy’ – as multiple women have said the singer demanded – and would routinely film their sexual encounters.
Louis is not among the alleged victims identified in the indictment against Kelly, which charges him with racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, bribery and forced labor between 1994 and 2018.
His testimony came during the third week of the six-week long trial as part of a slate of witnesses providing additional evidence beyond that from the girls and women listed in the indictment.

Prosecutors presented searing testimony from accusers to paint a picture of more than two decades of physical, sexual and emotional abuse by Kelly.
The 54-year-old denied all charges and faces between 10 years and life in prison if convicted on all counts.
A woman who went only by ‘Stephanie’ testified that she was 17 during her six-month relationship in 1999 with the then 32-year-old Kelly.
She testified about remembering a conversation with the R&B artist and two others when he said he preferred ‘young girls’ and questioned why ‘people make such a big deal of it.’ 
Now 39, she described sex with Kelly as ‘humiliating,’ describing in lurid detail his demands, and claiming he routinely filmed their sexual encounters.
‘He was one of two ways: nice and charming, jovial. Or he was controlling, intimidating, he could put the fear of God in me,’ Stephanie said. ‘He humiliated me, he degraded me, he scared me.’
He once forced her to perform oral sex on him in a vehicle with others in the car, she said, and sometimes left her naked and alone in rooms for hours.
‘He could put the fear of God in me very quickly,’ she said, saying she performed sex acts because ‘I didn’t feel like I had a choice,’ saying she’d suffered past abuse both at home and by a former boss. She also said she feared what the singer would do with their sex tapes.
Around the time she turned 18, Stephanie said she decided to stop seeing Kelly: ‘I felt used and humiliated and degraded.’
‘I just didn’t want to be abused anymore.’
Several witnesses have testified that Kelly demanded strict obedience from those around him, with Stephanie and other accusers saying he required that they call him ‘Daddy.’
His alleged exploitation of male and female employees has also come into question. Earlier, Tom Arnold, who worked at one of Kelly’s Chicago studios, said he eventually quit his job as studio manager because of the singer’s system for docking employee pay over such slights. 
Kelly vehemently denied the charges, claiming that the women were groupies who wanted to take advantage of his fame and fortune.
Additionally, Kelly is charged in a bribery scheme after he paid a $500 bribe in 1994 in order to get breakout singer Aaliyah, who was 15, a fake ID so he could marry her. Kelly allegedly feared that he had gotten the teen pregnant. Sexually abused women testify in R. Kelly’s trial

R. Kelly illegal marriage to teenage R&B singer Aaliyah in 1994 was presented by the prosecution as a criminal act underlying the racketeering charge against the singer.
The marriage, which took place in a 10-minute ceremony held inside a Chicago hotel when Aaliyah was just 15, was figured prominently in the prosecution’s closing arguments last week.
Prosecutors that Kelly’s ‘sexual abuse’ of Aaliyah was ‘part of the defendant’s pattern of racketeering.’
Earlier this month, Pastor Nathan Edmond, who conducted the 1994 nuptials, testified via video link at Kelly’s sex abuse trial.
Edmond alleged that he was recruited to marry Kelly, who was aged 27 at the time, after he was shown a falsified document that stated Aaliyah was 18. 

‘I didn’t know it was anyone special,’ Edmond stated on September 1. ‘You couldn’t see her whole face because her hair was over half of her face.’ 
Aaliyah, whose full name was Aaliyah Dana Haughton, worked with Kelly, who wrote and produced her 1994 debut album, ‘Age Ain´t Nothing But A Number.’
Late last month, Kelly’s former tour manager, Demetrius Smith, testified to the same court that he bribed a government worker with $500 to obtain Aaliyah’s fake ID so that Kelly could marry her. 
He reportedly feared that he had gotten Aaliyah pregnant, which would out him as having had sex with an underage girl.  
Prosecutors say Kelly wanted to use the marriage to shield himself from criminal charges related to having sex with a minor and to prevent her from testifying against him.  
The marriage was annulled in 1995 by Aaliyah’s parents, who did not know about the wedding before it occurred. She tragically died in a plane crash six years later at the age of 22.  

Pastor Edmond told the court on September 1 that he performed the ceremony at Sheraton Gateway Suites near Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. 
He claimed Kelly and Aaliyah wore matching sweatsuits, and that they both had one leg of their sweatpants rolled up to the knee. 
Edmond’s testimony was the first time he publicly spoke about the ceremony. 
He stated that Kelly had asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement before he conducted the nuptials, but he declined.
‘I kind of chuckled…  I said it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on. It should have been more airtight,’ Edmond stated. 
Despite refusing to sign the NDA, Edmond says he never spoke to the media because he gave Kelly his ‘word’ that he would not. 
After their secret, low-key wedding, Kelly and Aaliyah denied rumors that they had tied the knot. 
There were also whispers that Aaliyah was expecting Kelly’s baby, with one writer telling VIBE magazine in 1994: ‘I’ve been hearing about Robert [Kelly] and Aaliyah for a while — that she was pregnant. Or that she was coming and going in and out of his house.’
Meanwhile, a former live-in girlfriend of Kelly’s last month testified that the singer told her that he only married Aaliyah so that she could get an abortion.  
Aaliyah never confirmed the pregnancy. She went on to have a glittering career as an actress and singer before her untimely death in 2001. 
Maria Cruz Melendez, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the court during opening statements at Kelly’s trial last month: ‘Aaliyah met the defendant in approximately 1992, when she was about twelve years old. Aaliyah had a gift. She was a talented singer, and people thought that she could make it far in the industry, so the defendant [Kelly] began to produce and write music for Aaliyah when she was still a child. 
‘Shortly after he began working with her, the defendant began to engage in sexual activity with her. And for years while Aaliyah was a minor, too young to even consent to sex, he continued to engage in sexual activity with her that lasted several years.’
Back in 2019, Kelly’s lawyer, Steven Greenberg, claimed his client had ‘no idea’ Aaliyah was underage at the time of their marriage.  

During the trial, the court also heard testimony from another alleged victim of Kelly’s who claimed that the singer kept a gun by his side while he berated her before  forcing her to give him oral sex. 
‘He had a weapon, so I wasn´t going to step out of line,’ the woman said while recounting the 2018 episode. 
She said that at the time she spotted Kelly with a gun, he demanded to know, ‘How many men have you seen naked?’ He also instructed her to act ‘excited like a puppy’ and added: ‘I still have a lot to teach you.’ 
She testified that she saw Kelly on multiple occasions. 
Their last encounter came inside a New York City hotel suite, where she resisted having sex with him. She said he responded by warning her not to defy him, saying, ‘I’m a f–ing legend.’
Kelly’s personal physician has also testified, saying he treated him for herpes for several years.
Many of the sex-related misconduct allegations were discussed in the 2019 Lifetime documentary ‘Surviving R. Kelly.’