Singer R.Kelly is going behind bars for possibly a few decades when he is sentenced on June 29, nine months after being found guilty for trafficking women and children.
Kelly, 55 was was convicted of racketeering and eight counts of sex trafficking in September. The singer will receive 10 years to life in prison depending on the sentence. Prosecutors are pushing for at least 25 years.
His fall from meteoric heights marks a big win for women post the Me-Too movement as finally justice has been served.
The singer whose super hit songs include I Believe I Can Fly, Step in the Name of Love, Ignition and Burn It Up played an instrumental role in a violent and cruel scheme to lure women and children for his sexual pleasure.
His trial uncovered how he trafficked women between states in the US with the help of managers, security guards and other entourage members over a period of two decades. Prosecutors said that he showed “callous disregard” for his victims and was not remorseful.
“Indeed, the defendant’s decades of crime appear to have been fueled by narcissism and a belief that his musical talent absolved him of any need to conform his conduct-no matter how predatory, harmful, humiliating or abusive to others- to the strictures of the law,” said prosecutors.
The trial also revealed how Kelly had obtained illegal paperwork to marry singer Aaliyah when she was just 15 years old in 1994. Aaliyah later died in a plane crash.
The fraudulent certificate listed Aaliyah’s age as 18 at the time.
In addition to sentencing on Wednesday by the US District Court in New York, Kelly is also facing a separate trial in Chicago for child sex pornography, obstruction and sex abuse charges.
The million dollar question many have posed though is if his behaviour started in the 90’s why did it take such a long time for him to be brought to trial. The sad truth is that the singer had an expansive network of people who enabled his megalomaniac behavior ranging from close confidants to people in the music industry who knew what he was doing but turned a blind eye.
In fact according to one of the prosecutors, Elizabeth Geddes, Kelly often paid people off to keep quiet and when that failed he “used his henchmen to lodge threats and exact revenge” going so far as to blackmail women with nude photographs of themselves.
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