R. Kelly
That is the conclusion of the prosecution’s closing argument
R. Kelly is currently on trial on a number of suspected offenses
© Jamie Lamor Thompson / Shutterstock
The indictment in the trial against R. Kelly sees the responsibility for his alleged offenses of many years not only with the musician himself.
R. Kelly (54) is said to have used “lies, manipulation, threats and physical abuse” to make his victims docile over the years. Prosecutor Elizabeth Geddes drew this conclusion in her three-hour closing speech on Wednesday before the jury in New York, as reported by the “New York Times”, among others.
She does not only see the musician’s responsibility for this: In front of a billboard with a mug shot of the singer and pictures of people around him, Geddes explained that Kelly had built up a whole network that protected him and systematically recruited victims. “Without them, the defendant would not have been able to practice his crime pattern for nearly three decades,” it says.
Abused, drugged, imprisoned
The prosecution had heard a total of 45 witnesses since the trial began in mid-August, including R. Kelly’s friends and family, co-workers and long-time doctors.
Six of the 11 alleged victims heard in court – women and men – were minors when Kelly allegedly started the abuse. Several testified that they were physically abused, drugged and detained. In addition, the sex was filmed regularly. One woman said she was forced by Kelly to have an abortion as a teenager.
The abuse of the then 15-year-old singer Aaliyah, who illegally married Kelly, is also the subject of the trial. She died in a plane crash in 2001 at the age of 22. According to Gedees, the reason for the wedding was because Kelly feared prosecution after he believed that Aaliyah could be pregnant by him. Accordingly, he should have tried to force her to have an abortion.
Kelly hadn’t made a statement of her own. He denies all allegations and pleads not guilty. If convicted, he faces ten years in prison and has been in custody since 2019.