A federal judge named Aaliyah's uncle in list of people who saw to R. Kelly's 'professional and personal needs'

• Barry Hankerson, Aaliyah's uncle, once worked as Kelly's manager.
• Witnesses said he introduced Aaliyah to the predator who eventually made her his teen bride.

R. Kelly was sentenced Wednesday to 30 years in prison for running decades-long scheme in which he used his inner circle of employees and associates to recruit young girls, boys, and women for him to sexually abuse.

One of those girls, the jury heard, was beloved R&B icon Aaliyah, who was introduced to the sexual predator by her uncle, Barry Hankerson, when she was only 12-years-old. Hankerson was Kelly's manager at the time.

In a memo Tuesday, denying Kelly's request for a new trial, Judge Ann Donnelly named Hankerson among the employees that were hired to see to Kelly's "professional and personal needs."

There was no evidence presented in court that Hankerson knew Kelly was abusing his niece, but he was identified in another manager's testimony as the man who introduced Kelly to Aaliyah at her home in Chicago.

Insider reached out to Hankerson through his music label, "Blackground Records," but didn't get an immediate response.

Aaliyah sung for Kelly, and the R&B star took an interest in her. He wrote music for her — including her hit song "Age Ain't Nothing But a Number" — and they performed together.

A few years after meeting Aaliyah, Kelly bribed an Illinois official to obtain a fake ID for her so he could marry her in a hotel room when she was 15-years-old, witnesses testified. The point of the marriage, one of Kelly's other victims testified, was so she could get an abortion without her parents' consent.

Without naming Hankerson, Donnelly spoke sternly about the role Kelly's employees played in enabling his abuse of Aaliyah and the other girls and women.

His runners, managers, and others in his inner circle — specifically Demetrius Smith — knew what Kelly was doing to Aaliyah and others, and didn't do anything to stop it, she said. Smith testified that he once confronted Kelly because he believed he was being "too playful" with the young girl and that he may have been "messing around" with her.

"Mr. Smith knew what you were doing, but when you thought she was pregnant and thought you would be caught for what you had been doing, he and your other handlers helped to bribe somebody to get this child a fake ID so that you could marry her because you wanted to cover up that you'd been having sex with a young girl," she said. "They wanted to protect you and your career and they helped you, and the victim didn't matter."

An enterprise of abuse

Throughout Kelly's six week trial, jurors heard from Kelly's victims, employees, and others about how he controlled the young women and girls in his orbit.

Evidence presented at trial showed that once Kelly established control, he would sexually and physically abuse his victims, who he made follow a strict set of rules that governed how they dressed, how they spoke, where they went, and who they looked at.

Some of the employees were made to hand out Kelly's phone number to young people at hangouts like McDonald's or his concerts. Others were in charge of enforcing his strict rules when they were in his homes.

Evidence presented at trial showed that once Kelly established control, he would sexually and physically abuse his victims, who he made follow a strict set of rules that governed how they dressed, how they spoke, where they went, and who they looked at.

If Kelly deemed they broke one of his rules, the punishments were severe and humiliating, evidence showed.

"There are countless other examples of employees who stood by or enabled your behavior. They heard you beating these victims. They knew that you were holding them in a room or on a bus," Donnelly told R. Kelly on Wednesday.

Donnelly questioned whether the employees turned turned a blind eye in an "exception to every standard of human decency" just because he was famous.

"Did they agree with you, as we heard at trial, that you can do whatever you want because you fancied yourself a genius who should be 'allowed to do whatever I want because of what I give to this world?'" she asked. "There's much, much more that could be said about people who excused this and tolerated it for all these years, but these people are not before me for sentence today."