Woman says it was her and R Kelly in key video at 2008 trial
CHICAGO (AP) — A woman who has been central to R. Kelly’s legal troubles for more than two decades testified Thursday that the R&B singer sexually abused her “hundreds” of times before she turned 18 and that it was her and Kelly in a videotape that was at the heart of his 2008 child pornography trial, at which he was acquitted.
Jane — the pseudonym for the now 37-year-old woman as she testified — paused, tugged at a necklace and dabbed her eyes with a tissue as she said publicly for the first time that the girl in the video was her and that the man was Kelly. When the prosecutor asked how old she was at the time, she said quietly: “14.” Kelly, 55, would have been around 30 years old at the time.
In addition to charges of child pornography and enticement of minors, Kelly faces charges of conspiring to rig the 2008 trial by intimidating and paying off the girl to ensure she didn't testify then.
Some jurors said after the 2008 trial, which was on state charges, that they had no choice but to acquit the R&B star because the girl — by then an adult — didn't testify. On the stand Thursday, Jane conceded that she lied to the grand jury before the trial that it was not her in the video.
“I was afraid something bad would happen to Robert," she told jurors about why she didn't tell the truth then, referring to Kelly by his full first name. “I was protecting him."
Jane also became emotional when she was asked to explain why Kelly can be seen handing money to her in the video. She said it was a precaution against anyone accusing him of abusing a child if the video ever fell into the hands of authorities.
“If anyone saw the tape ... he wanted it to appear as if I was a prostitute," Jane said.
She also described her parents confronting Kelly in the early 2000s about...