CHICAGO (AP) — The mother of her daughter, whose prosecutors allege R. Kelly was sexually abused since she was 14 years old, was named on a jury Monday in the singer’s federal trial, 20 years ago by a state grand jury. said he lied to Kelly feared for their lives if they told the truth.
The mother, who used the pseudonym “Susan,” told the court in Chicago how she, her husband, and Kelly were when confronted in court over whether their parents were abusing the Grammy winner at a hotel in the early 2000s. They explained how they were crying to their daughter. She testified that they were surprised when Kelly told them, “Are you for or against us?”
She said she took these words to mean, “If we don’t do what they want us to do, they’ll hurt us.” She testified that she had lied about her daughter not appearing in child pornography videos and that she had to leave the country in a matter of weeks.
“We were so scared,” she told the jury.
She later added that she lied to the grand jury. She also said she feared for her daughter’s well-being, warning her parents that her daughter might commit suicide if she refused what Kelly asked them to do.
Kelly, 55, successfully rigged a child pornography trial in a state court in 2008 and went on trial in his hometown on charges of producing child pornography, soliciting sex from an underage girl, and obstructing justice. It is
Kelly is already considering a 30-year prison sentence imposed by a federal judge in New York in June on 2021 racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
Susan’s daughter, who went by the pseudonym “Jane,” was one of the prosecution’s first witnesses when the trial began last week. Jane, now 37, told a jury last week that she had, in fact, been sexually assaulted by Kelly hundreds of times before she turned 18. He said he had been sexually abused.
On Monday, Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjeen, repeatedly questioned Susan in an often-controversial cross-examination as to whether she truly felt her life was in danger from Kelly and his associates.
“Nobody actually threatened you, did they?” asked Bonjean.
“Yes, yes,” Susan replied.
Bonjean also asked why, if Susan felt so threatened by Kelly, why she and her family continued to socialize with Kelly for the next twenty years. to work on Kelly’s recordings, which was his only income for a period of time. She also said she was worried about Jane’s welfare if she cut off her relationship with Kelly.
Jane’s father, her husband, died last year, she told jurors.
During her crucifixion, Bonjean emphasized Susan’s testimony that she lied to the Illinois grand jury and asked if she was “telling the truth now”.
Prosecutors at the Cook County State Attorney’s Office proceeded to file charges in the mid-2000s and chose to bring the case to trial in 2008. Even though she knew there would be a big hurdle not being able to call the girl in the video to testify.
After acquitting Kelly in a 2008 trial, several jurors told reporters that the girl, who was in her 20s at the time, was actually her in the video.
During the current trial, federal prosecutors played excerpts from a video showing Kelly sexually abusing 14-year-old Jane at around age 30.
Kelly has been followed for decades by allegations about his sexual behavior. I was.
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