The woman was testifying about her secret sexual relationship with R&B superstar R Kelly for more than four hours on Thursday, as an influential young teenager, when she was asked about one of the central secrets in the case. was.
After all, after two decades of silence, why did he decide to come forward and speak his mind?
There was a long, silent pause in Chicago federal court. The woman testifying under the pseudonym “Jane” looked down, pursed her lips and began to shake nervously in her chair.
“I’m tired of living with his lies,” Jen finally said.
The reaction sparked a surprise day on the stand for Jen, now 37, star witness Dirksen in Kelly’s child pornography trial surfaced at the US Courthouse, where the now disgraced singer and two former collaborators were accused of conspiracy to cover up Kelly’s years. Put it sexual misconduct.
In taking the stand, Jane was telling her story publicly for the first time since she refused to cooperate with investigators who were looking for a sex tape made with Kelly in the late 1990s.
As prosecutors alleged, Jane’s lack of cooperation left a glaring gap in Kelly’s 2008 trial in Cook County, where jurors said they could not agree about whether the girl on the porn tape was actually was hers. In the years that followed, while Kelly’s career soared and then other repeated allegations of sexual misconduct, Jen and her parents remained completely silent.
That all changed on Thursday. Dressed in a white blazer with her hair in a long ponytail, Jen took the jury through a painful tale of alleged grooming, sexual abuse and cover-ups when she first had sexual contact with Kelly when she was just 14 years old. did.
She remained on the stands for most of her time, testifying in a soft but factual tone about how she got into Kelly’s class and how their mutual love of music and basketball led to a friendship despite the age difference.
But Jen’s voice slows and she breaks down when she’s asked to narrate sexual encounters recorded by Kelly, including the now-infamous tape at the center of Kelly’s 2008 trial.
One of the videos, which is expected to be played for jurors, shows Jen and Kelly having oral sex in the living room of their Lakeview home, she said. She said she could be seen giving him champagne and asking her to mention her genitalia to the 14-year-old. Then he urinated on her, she said in a voice that was almost soft to hear, tears welling up from her eyes.
On another video from around the same time, Jane testified, filmed in a wood-paneled Jacuzzi room in the basement of Kelly’s home in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood, Kelly appeared to hand over her money before having sex.
When a prosecutor asked why he gave her the money, Jane began to cry after a long pause, saying: “Because if anyone saw the tape or if it was released for some reason, he would It’s like I was a whore.”
As she said it, Jane looked sadly at the table in front of her. Sitting at the defense table in the courtroom, Kelly shook her head.
She said that when she was 15, her sex acts escalated to orgasm. When asked how she knew her exact age, Jen calmly replied, “Because I lost my virginity at that time.”
After that, he had sex “innumerable times,” sometimes with other teenage girls whom Jane recruited at Kelly’s request, she said. He said the encounter took place at Kelly’s home on West George Street, in his Near West Side recording studio, on tour buses, and in Chicago and elsewhere.
Two of the other minor victims are also expected to testify against Kelly later in the trial.
To explain how young she looked at the time of the encounters, prosecutors had Jane identify two childhood photos of her. For the first time, when she was a student in high school, she was shown smiling, holding a basketball on one knee. The other was a headshot from the time she was in a musical group at the age of 13 – around the time she said she first met Kelly.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Some cases carry a minimum sentence of 10 years in prison if convicted, while others carry between five and 20 years in prison. Prosecutors are also seeking to forfeit $1.5 million in personal funds from Kelly.
Also on trial are Kelly’s former business manager, Darrell McDavid, and another accomplice, Milton “June” Brown, who, according to the indictment, was accused of buying back sex tapes taken from Kelly’s archive and hiding years of alleged sexual abuse. was planned for. of young girls.
Despite the consequences, Kelly still faces decades in prison. In June, he was sentenced to 30 years on federal racketeering charges brought to New York. He is appealing both the jury’s decision and the sentence in that case.
In early statements Wednesday, prosecutors portrayed Kelly as a serial stalker who had sexual contact with underage girls hundreds of times. Five women, including “Pinky” and “Jane,” are expected to testify during the trial that Kelly sexually abused them when they were teenagers.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonzen, said the prosecution’s case rests on the testimony of false, extortionists (and) people who are involved in the pornography trafficking business. ,
Bonjean will have the opportunity to cross-examine Jane on Friday.
Jen told the jury on Thursday that when Chicago police first began investigating her relationship with Kelly in 2000, she refused because he told her he would be doomed if it came to light.
“That was something I would take to my grave,” she said, with Kelly telling her that she “did a good job answering their questions.”
Things escalated in early 2002, however, when her aunt, Stephanie “Sparkle” Edwards, told her that “a sex tape was leaked” depicting Jen and Kelly and that it was about to go public. She said Kelly “continued to emphasize how important it was to deny it.”
Not long after, Kelly met with Jen and her parents and told them the truth about their relationship and apologized and tried to keep them by her side, she said. Jane testified, “I remember my dad coming out.” “He was saying, ‘I can’t help you, I can’t help you.’ … he was hysterical.”
Jane said Kelly decided to send them to the Bahamas and Cancun so that they would not be “accessible” to the police and the media.
Jane testified, “There was a lot of negative attention getting around the videotape and Robert wanted us to leave the country to clear our heads a lot and figure out ways to move forward.”
Jane testified that when she returned from the trip several weeks later, Kelly and her associates, including her high-powered Chicago legal team, increased pressure to hide any evidence of their illicit relationship.
In one video, Jen is wearing a distinctive cross necklace, she said – the same one she wore in her passport photo at the time. Kelly’s lawyers insisted that she hand over both the necklace and the passport to him, she testified.
In addition, Kelly was concerned about a heart tattoo with Kelly’s name that she got when she was out of the country with her parents. When he showed it to Kelly, he said it would be a problem: “You can’t have a tattoo like this, everything’s going on,” she said, according to her testimony.
She testified that Kelly arranged for the tattoo to be shaded with a different design to obscure her name. And it was Brown who took her to the tattoo artist’s house, according to Jen.
In April 2002, when Jane was called to testify before a Cook County grand jury, Kelly stressed how important it was to be loyal to her, how to act and what she had to say. . She said that he repeatedly told her about “how strong and hard I had to be in denying our relationship and sex tapes.”
Jane lied to the grand jurors, telling them she didn’t have sex with Kelly and that they didn’t make any videos. She was also shown her photos from the video, and denied that they were hers.
When prosecutors asked why he lied under oath, he sighed loudly. He took a long pause. When he started speaking, his voice was trembling.
“Because I was afraid to expose Robert,” she said. “… I didn’t even want that person to be me. I was embarrassed.”
Jane admitted that in exchange for her testimony at a federal trial, she was exempted from prosecution for perjury at a state grand jury.
While Kelly was awaiting trial over the Cook County charges, Jane said she moved into her mansion in south suburban Olympia Fields. He wanted her to be close to him — “under his wing,” said Jane.
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When she was 12 or 13, she began visiting Kelly’s studio regularly with her aunt Edwards, who was Kelly’s protégé.
Edwards advised her that she should ask Kelly to be her godfather, she testified.
For much of her testimony, Jane remained calm at the witness stand, keeping her gaze as the prosecutor asked her questions, occasionally pausing to sweep her braid from her shoulder or wipe her eyelashes.
Prosecutors called first witness stand Matthew Halsizer, who in 2001 bought a larger house in Lakeview: a converted church with a swimming pool and basketball court and a barbershop. The previous owner, he came to find out, was R. Kelly.
After moving in, Hulsizer said he discovered that the smoke detector in at least one bedroom wasn’t actually a smoke detector—it hid a small hidden video camera. And to leave the bedroom, you had to press a button, he said, a feature he removed because he thought it was a security hazard.
jmeisner@chicagotribune.com
mcrepeau@chicagotribune.com
(This story has not been edited by seemayo staff and is published from a rss feed)