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CHICAGO (AP) – Two other plaintiffs testify at R. Kelly’s Child pornography and solicitation of minors Monday’s trial brings the total number of plaintiffs who have so far testified in the Chicago federal trial to three.
The first plaintiff who testified under the pseudonym “Jane” two weeks ago is pivotal to another charge — the R&B singer successfully rigged his 2008 state child pornography trial by threatening witnesses and withholding video evidence.
Kelly, 55, was handed over 30 years in prison In June, a federal judge in New York was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
All told, prosecutors cited five plaintiffs in pretrial filings, but it was unclear whether the remaining two would testify before the government breaks sometime this week. The trial is expected to last a month and end in mid-September.
A plaintiff, using the pseudonym “Pauline,” told jurors Monday that she was Jane’s high school classmate who introduced her to Kelly in 1998 when they were 14 and Kelly was about 30.
Later that year, when she was at Kelly’s home in Chicago, Pauline said she was startled when she walked into Kelly and a naked Jane in the basement. She said Kelly told her “we all have secrets” and it was “our secret”.
Pauline repeatedly told jurors she loved Kelly. But, as a 37-year-old mum, she said she now sees things differently.
“If anyone did anything to my kids, I would kill them. Period,” she said.
She testified that Kelly sexually abused her more than 100 times, starting when she was 14, and they first had sex when she was 15.
During cross-examination, Kelly’s lead attorney, Jennifer Bonjang, accused Pauline of inaccurately having sex with Kelly when she was a minor.
“Whether it was once or twice, wrong is wrong,” Pauline shot back.
A second plaintiff who testified Monday, known only as Tracy, said she was introduced to Kelly when she was 16 by the owner of a record label she interned in 1998. Tracy told jurors she repeatedly rejected Kelly’s advances.
In a room in Kelly’s Chicago studio, she recalled telling him when he started pulling her closer to him, “You know I’m 16?” Minutes later, when he “exposed myself…I tried to back up, but He grabbed my shirt,” Tracy testified.
On another occasion, she described Kelly walking into the hotel room where Tracy was staying and yelling at her for wearing clothes under her bathrobe.
“I told him I didn’t want to have sex,” she testified.
But she said Kelly ordered her to sleep with him anyway, and at some point used force to sexually abuse her. She said she first had sex with Kelly when she was 16 and then did it dozens of times at 17 and 18.
Tracy began crying in the stands on Monday as she began telling jurors about the day Kelly walked into the room Tracy had been waiting for. Kelly and Jane came together.
“I was really confused, really angry,” she recalls. “I just really don’t think there’s anyone else besides me and Rob.”
Kelly’s 2008 trial revolved around a video that state prosecutors said showed Kelly abusing Jane. But after Kelly was acquitted in 2008, jurors said they had no choice because the girl did not testify at that trial.
simple Testify at the current trialsaid she was the child in the video and Kelly was an adult man.
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