R. Kelly’s legal team will get a chance to question the government’s star witness on Friday after she gave what jurors could see as damaging testimony against Kelly in their federal trial in Chicago on charges that included the production of child pornography
Jane, the pseudonym used for her during the trial, has been the focus of Kelly’s legal troubles for more than two decades. She testified on Thursday for more than four hours, explaining that she and Kelly were in a videotape at the centre of her 2008 child pornography trial, where she was acquitted.
Jen, now 37, stopped, patted a necklace and patted her eyes with a tissue as she publicly stated for the first time that the girl in the video was her and that the man was Kelly.
When a prosecutor asked Jane how old she was when the video was shot, she said quietly: “14.” Kelly, 55, would have been around 30 years old.
In addition to charges of child pornography and enticement of minors, Kelly faces charges of conspiring to rig that 2008 trial by intimidating and paying off the girl to ensure she didn’t testify then.
Some jurors who presided over that 2008 trial, which was on state charges, said they had no choice but to acquit the R&B star because the girl, by then an adult, didn’t testify. On the Thursday stand, Jane conceded that she lied to a state grand jury in 2002 when she said it was not her in the video.
“I was afraid something bad would happen to Robert,” she told jurors why she didn’t tell the truth then, referring to Kelly by his full first name. “I was protecting him.”
She added another reason she lied about the person’s identity in the video. “I also did not want that person to be me,” she told jurors. “I was ashamed.”
Dressed in a white dress coat and removing a face mask before testifying, Jane remained on the witness stand for over four hours for the government. Kelly’s attorney was scheduled to get her chance to cross-examine Jane starting Friday morning.
A prosecutor asked Jane toward the end of the day Thursday why she decided in recent years to begin speaking honestly about what happened with Kelly, who Jane said she continued to care for and sometimes live with into her 20s.
“I became exhausted living with his lies,” she answered. She added that federal prosecutors assured her she would not be charged with lying to authorities if she testified truthfully at this trial.
Earlier, Jane also became emotional when asked to explain why Kelly could be seen handing money to her in the video. She said it was a precaution against anyone accusing him of abusing a child if the footage ever fell into the hands of authorities.
“If anyone saw the tape … he wanted it to appear as if I was a prostitute,” Jane said.
She described her parents confronting Kelly in the early 2000s about whether he was having sex with their daughter. Kelly dropped to his knees and begged her parents to forgive him, Jane testified. She said she later implored her parents not to do anything to get Kelly in trouble, telling them she loved him.
Kelly mostly stared down at the defence table as she spoke and rarely looked up at her. She, too, rarely looked in his direction.
Earlier, she testified that Kelly sexually abused her “hundreds” of times before she turned 18, starting when she was 15. She said they were having oral sex in the video and that she was 14.
Jane first met Kelly in the late 1990s in junior high school. She had tagged along to Kelly’s Chicago recording studio with her aunt, a professional singer who worked with Kelly. Soon after that meeting, Jane told her parents that Kelly would be her godfather.
Kelly, who rose from poverty on Chicago’s South Side to become a star singer, songwriter and producer, knew a conviction in 2008 would effectively end his life as he knew it. So prosecutors say he conspired to fix that trial.