- A federal judge sentenced
R. Kelly to 30 years in prison. - Kelly, 55, was convicted of sex-trafficking and racketeering charges in September.
A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced R. Kelly to 30 years in prison.
The R&B star was found guilty in September of racketeering and sex-trafficking charges stemming from a decades-long practice of recruiting and grooming girls and young women for illegal sex.
Judge Ann Donnelly, who oversaw his
Donnelly condemned Kelly for the "serial rape and
"These victims were disposable to you," Donnelly said. "You left in your wake a trail of broken lives."
Kelly, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, has been detained in Brooklyn, New York, since his arrest in 2019. He declined to give a statement at his
Prosecutors previously asked the judge to sentence Kelly, 55, to a minimum of 25 years in prison. Bonjean — who joined the case after Kelly's conviction and has represented a number of high-profile clients accused of sex crimes, including Bill Cosby and sex-cult founder Keith Raniere — requested a sentence of 10 years, the mandatory minimum.
Bonjean argued in court that the judge should consider Kelly's own difficult childhood as a mitigating factor in sentencing. His struggles with literacy brought him great shame, she said. And Kelly was sexually abused by his sister and a landlord when he was a child, she said.
Donnelly was unmoved. She referenced statements given by his victims earlier in the hearing.
"As we saw in court today, there are countless people who had these experiences who did not commit these crimes," Donnelly said.
Kelly didn't react when Donnelly issued the sentence. He sat next to his attorneys at a table and looked down at his hands clasped in front of him.
Recruitment, abuse, and blackmail
The prosecution called more than 40 witnesses to testify in Kelly's summer 2020 trial, which spanned more than a month at the US District Court in Brooklyn.
The arrest, conviction, and now sentencing of Kelly marks the dramatic downfall of a man who was once considered the king of R&B. Numerous women — and two men — who testified against him at trial said that he lured them into sexual slavery after promising to help their careers in the music industry — promises he almost never kept.
The women, many of whom were teenagers when they met Kelly, testified that Kelly directed them to have sex with him and each other and said the singer obsessively videotaped the sexual encounters.
Some accusers told the jury that Kelly blackmailed them by forcing them to write letters containing embarrassing information and lies, which he saved in case they ever spoke out against him.
The accusers also testified about the control Kelly maintained over their lives, requiring them to seek his permission to use the bathroom and forbidding them from looking at other men.
When they stepped out of line, some women testified, Kelly would be furious and punish them. One woman said he forced her to get an abortion; other women said he coerced them into make embarrassing videos of themselves, including one woman who said he forced her to smear feces on her face.
Donnelly said Kelly's "worldwide fame" and the "untold money" he leveraged to control his victims were among the factors she considered in his sentencing. The 25-year span of his sexual-slavery scheme, she said, demonstrated it was not "sex addiction," as Bonjean argued, nor an "aberration," but "calculated."
"You preyed on your ready supply of adoring fans and had your employees bring them to you," the judge told Kelly Wednesday.
The trial also unveiled new information about the nature of Kelly's short-lived sham marriage to Aaliyah, the R&B singer whom Kelly mentored from the age of 12. Their marriage was annulled less than a year after they were wed.
Former employees, an accuser, and a minister told the jury that Kelly bribed an Illinois government employee to obtain a fake ID for Aaliyah in order to marry her so she wouldn't need her parents' permission to get an abortion. Aaliyah died in 2001, at 22, in a plane crash near the Bahamas.
Experts previously told Insider that the operation Kelly ran was similar to a sex cult, in which he became an "object of worship" to those he controlled.
Another trial to come
Kelly, who has been held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, is also awaiting an August trial for a federal sex-crimes case in Chicago.
In that case, the artist faces over a dozen charges involving the sexual abuse of six minors.
Prosecutors say the abuse of some of those victims was recorded on video, prompting child-pornography charges in the case.
Kelly's former employees, Derrel McDavid and Milton Brown, have also been charged in the case and are accused of conspiring to conceal evidence ahead of Kelly's 2008 child-porn trial in Cook County. McDavid and Brown have pleaded not guilty.
Kelly was acquitted in that 2018 after his lawyers successfully pushed the trial back years and witnesses withdrew from cooperating with prosecutors.
It was at that trial that Jerhonda Pace, then a 16-year-old fan of the singer, met Kelly, when she showed up to court to support him.
Soon afterward, Kelly invited Pace to his home. It was the beginning of a sexually abusive relationship that lasted years.
At his trial this past fall in Brooklyn, Pace was the first of Kelly's accusers to testify against him.