R. Kelly Trial Verdict: R. Kelly Is Found Guilty of All Counts and Faces Life in Prison (Published 2021) (2024)

R. Kelly is going to prison. Why did it take so long?

Here are a few possible answers:

The entertainer had an expansive network of enablers around him, federal prosecutors said, from his closest confidantes and employees to many in the music industry who knew of the concerns about his behavior but did not intervene.

The government drew attention to what has been described as the “settlement factory” that kept his accusers quiet, offering evidence of Mr. Kelly’s payments to women who made accusations in exchange for their silence.

And when that was not enough, Mr. Kelly “used his henchmen to lodge threats and exact revenge,” blackmailing women with nude photographs of themselves or embarrassing information, one prosecutor, Elizabeth Geddes, said in closing arguments.

Federal prosecutors also accused Mr. Kelly of paying witnesses to not cooperate with the authorities in the lead-up to his 2008 trial and acquittal. They said the singer let some witnesses know they could be “subject to physical harm” if they proceeded.

There are some cultural factors that may have helped Mr. Kelly avoid consequences for his behavior as well.

Legal experts and people who study sexual abuse have also suggested that the race of most of Mr. Kelly’s accusers likely played a role. Experts say Black women have historically been far more likely than white women to have their accusations about sexual misconduct distrusted or ignored.

“Our reality is that our society just does not view Black women and girls as credible,” said Kenyette Barnes, a co-founder of the #MuteRKelly campaign. “We assume that 15-year-old Black girls have the cognitive ability to manipulate a grown man.”

And some superstars have admitted that the race of the accusers shaped their perceptions in Mr. Kelly’s case.

“I didn’t value the accusers’ stories because they were Black women,” Chance the Rapper, who is from the singer’s hometown, Chicago, said during the “Surviving R. Kelly” documentary series.

Some of Mr. Kelly’s steadfast supporters continue to believe he is the victim of a larger, racist conspiracy to keep successful Black men from thriving, and that view was once more widespread in Black communities before his trial, experts note.

As a former television critic at The New York Times, Aisha Harris, said, two cultural touchstones —“Chappelle’s Show” and “The Boondocks” — also helped shape the perception of the accusations against R. Kelly through humor, keeping audiences amused instead of troubled.

The cultural climate has also changed dramatically since the allegations against Mr. Kelly first began to surface. After the singer pleaded not guilty to the charges that led to his 2008 trial, he performed alongside children at a church in Chicago the same day. He was embraced by the congregation.

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R. Kelly will be sentenced in May, as other criminal charges move forward.

Mr. Kelly’s lawyer said he didn’t know if that trial would go forward before the sentencing, or if Mr. Kelly would be moved to Chicago from the Brooklyn detention facility where he has been held for the duration of the New York trial. But the Chicago case will proceed, and it is likely that Mr. Kelly will eventually be moved there to face those charges.

At the Brooklyn sentencing, Judge Ann M. Donnelly will be able to consider victim-impact statements and testimony from Mr. Kelly’s accusers, some of which will be filed with the court ahead of time.

Prosecutors thank R. Kelly’s accusers, saying verdict ‘forever brands’ him as a predator.

She added: “We hope that today’s verdict brings some measure of comfort and closure to his victims.”

The first accusations against Mr. Kelly date back to the early 1990s, but he evaded criminal prosecution for years, even as additional women came forward, and he was acquitted of child p*rnography in 2008 after a sex-tape came to light that the authorities said depicted him with a 15-year-old girl.

Ms. Kasulis said that Mr. Kelly’s conviction on Monday delivered a powerful message to both the entertainer and other influential men: “No matter how long it takes, the long arm of the law will catch up with you.”

Addressing what he called a “decades-long reign of terror” inflicted by Mr. Kelly, Peter Fitzhugh, a special agent-in-charge at Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security, said that the singer “made one critical error.”

“He underestimated the resilience and courage of the victims who refused to be silenced,” Mr. Fitzhugh said.

He added that he hoped the women and men who testified against the singer could now begin a “healing process” and restore the aspects of their lives that Mr. Kelly had destroyed.

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R. Kelly made his victims write letters exonerating him. Instead, they helped convict him.

Mr. Kelly kept some of the evidence in FedEx folders, with labels like “Old Messages,” and other pieces — like a seven-page, front-and-back, handwritten letter from a woman who testified for three days early in the trial — in protective sleeves in a locked safe.

Calling Mr. Kelly a “great man,” the woman wrote: “At the age of 17 I never had sex with Robert Kelly,” then proceeded to tick off a list of specific sex acts that she said she had not participated in with the R&B superstar.

Less than two years later, when the woman who had written the letter testified under a pseudonym, she said she had experienced coerced and recorded sexual encounters with the singer starting when she was 17. He hit her often, she said, and forced her to get an abortion.

Every letter that prosecutors introduced at trial came from Mr. Kelly’s personal collection in what appeared to be a yearslong attempt to build his defense even before the indictment in Brooklyn was unsealed. They were all signed by accusers who were at the forefront of the case against the singer.

Those accusers now say he forced them to write the letters, including a man who testified that the singer told him what to write “word for word.”

The material, known as “collateral,” makes it difficult for victims to escape, said Dawn M. Hughes, a clinical and forensic psychologist who provided expert testimony for the prosecution. (She also testified as an expert at the trial of Keith Raniere, the Nxivm cult leader, who also relied on such collateral to intimidate women he was abusing.)

Creating collateral keeps adolescents “captive,” she said, and creates a power dynamic she likened to “slowly sucking the oxygen out of the room and once you realize it, you can’t get out.”

Gloria Allred, lawyer for survivors, says ‘justice has been done.’

Mr. Kelly used his celebrity to manipulate and sexually abuse underage girls, Ms. Allred said, and had used a network of enablers to help build and sustain that world of torment and abuse. Mr. Kelly also knowingly spread herpes to his victims, she said.

Ms. Allred represented three of the six victims whose accounts were at the center of the case, as well as two other key witnesses in the trial. She also represented a third who in the end was not called to testify.

“Let this be a message to other celebrities who also use their fame to prey on their fans,” Ms. Allred said. “The issue is not if the law will catch up to you, the only question is when.”

Jacquelyn Kasulis, acting attorney for the Eastern District of New York, also spoke at the news conference, applauding the verdict and the “bravery and resilience” of survivors whose testimony was central to the case against Mr. Kelly.

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Outside the courthouse, R. Kelly’s die-hard fans react to guilty verdict with outrage.

“This is a racist country,” another said. (Mr. Kelly, like many of the women and men who testified against him, is Black.)

As dozens of accusations against R. Kelly spilled over into public view in recent years, Mr. Kelly’s reputation has deteriorated. But a steadfast group of supporters maintains that he is innocent, with some attending each day of his racketeering trial in New York.

The group remained relatively small throughout the six-week trial, and often gathered outside the courthouse before the day’s proceedings began. Some crafted chalk art including the words “Free R. Kelly” on a nearby sidewalk. Others waited in line to be among the first to enter the building when it opened.

During breaks, the fervent group often streamed the singer’s music on a loudspeaker in a park across the street from the courthouse. Some spoke with followers on social media live-streams and offered updates on the day’s testimony.

And when the days ended, many cheered and shook hands with Mr. Kelly’s defense lawyers while jeering federal prosecutors as they left the building.

Much of Mr. Kelly’s current fan base lives in and around Chicago, his hometown, where he once was seen as a success story, someone who overcame a low-income upbringing filled with struggles. Several of the supporters who have attended the New York trial flew from Illinois to follow the case.

A handful of supporters claimed seats each day in the back of the courtroom where the public and reporters could watch the proceedings via closed-circuit video. They often reacted out loud to the government’s witnesses and to the counterarguments of Mr. Kelly’s defense lawyers.

At times, it landed them it trouble.

After a prosecutor said that there had been “audible, negative reactions to testimony” and that the father of one accuser had been verbally accosted, Judge Ann M. Donnelly, who presided over the trial, warned visitors that they would lose access to the courthouse if they did not “behave.”

Emily Palmer contributed reporting.

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The ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ documentary catalyzed the case against the singer.

“It makes a difference when there are cameras involved, and when people can actually see these women telling their stories and feel it,” said Dream Hampton, an executive producer of the documentary.

The trail of allegations against Mr. Kelly was first examined through reporting that first emerged in the early 2000s by Jim DeRogatis, a music critic at The Chicago-Sun Times. And in 2008, Mr. Kelly was tried and acquitted in a criminal court in Chicago in a high-profile child p*rnography case. Years later, Mr. DeRogatis went on to publish several more damning and widely shared articles.

But it was the documentary — emerging amid the broader Me Too movement’s reckoning over sexual abuse by powerful men — that finally derailed Mr. Kelly’s career.

The series was followed by criminal charges against the singer in Minnesota, Illinois and New York at the federal and state levels. RCA, Mr. Kelly’s record label, and its parent company Sony Music Entertainment cut him loose.

On Monday, Mr. Kelly was convicted on all charges. When he is sentenced in May, he faces life in prison.

But the case does not stop when a verdict is reached, Ms. Hampton said.

“Peer accountability really is the true end here,” Ms. Hampton said.

R. Kelly’s trial could become music’s #MeToo moment.

But the criminal trial of R. Kelly, which ended with his conviction on Monday, has been by far the most high profile #MeToo moment in music. To a great degree, that is a result of the serious nature of the charges that federal prosecutors brought against him, and of the fact that Mr. Kelly was accused of engaging in sex acts with women and girls as young as 13 or 14.

But similar accusations against Mr. Kelly have been public for decades, publicized through reporting in The Chicago Sun-Times in the early 2000s and at a child p*rnography trial in 2008, where he was acquitted. For years, Mr. Kelly remained signed to a major record label, where he sold millions of albums and maintained his status as a top-level hitmaker. Stars like Lady Gaga, Jay-Z, Usher and Chance the Rapper worked with him; in 2013, he performed at the Pitchfork Festival in Chicago, a home for hipster-approved indie rock.

That Mr. Kelly avoided banishment from the music world for so long — and, indeed, that he was embraced by that world — has been seen as a stain against the industry. It was only in 2017 that public opinion began to turn decisively against Mr. Kelly. That was when BuzzFeed News began to publish a series of investigative reports by Jim DeRogatis, a journalist who had chronicled the accusations against Mr. Kelly at The Sun-Times years before.

In early 2019, after the broadcast of the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” featuring stomach-turning firsthand accounts by numerous women, Mr. Kelly was finally dropped by RCA, his label. By then, Mr. Kelly had not had a hit in a number of years.

Today, Mr. Kelly has been largely shunned by the music industry at large; Lady Gaga, for example, apologized for working with him and removed the track they recorded together in 2013. But Mr. Kelly’s catalog is still available on streaming services. Its popularity there — on Spotify, his music draws 5.2 million listeners each month — suggests a fan base that has never left.

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R. Kelly’s lawyer says the case was ‘replete with inconsistencies.’

But jurors found the witnesses credible, and convicted Mr. Kelly on all charges.

Asked if Mr. Kelly was prepared for the conviction, Mr. Cannick said: “I don’t think anybody is ever prepared for an outcome like this.”

Mr. Cannick stepped outside the courthouse, where dozens of reporters and camera crews had been stationed all day in anticipation of a verdict. He and other members of the defense team strode past the microphones set up for a news conference and into the adjacent park, where he was quickly ambushed by cameras and microphones.

Speaking as he walked, Mr. Cannick told the cameras that “witness after witness had given three, four, five different versions” of their stories.

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A woman who testified against R. Kelly in 2008 called the trial ‘a big relief.’

It was not enough for jurors, and the singer was acquitted of child p*rnography charges in 2008.

On Monday, she said she was feeling “a bevy of emotions” after Mr. Kelly was finally found guilty of sex-trafficking and racketeering charges on Monday, 20 years after she was first approached by a lawyer over the sex tape involving her niece.

“It’s a good day. It’s a sad day,” she said, her voice breaking. “It’s just the fact that my niece and the other young women can now feel a sense of relief — he’s not able to do this to them any longer.”

In an earlier interview in the days before the singer’s conviction, she described the case as “a big relief” and an enormous “release” of the regrets, hardships and frustrations she has held for decades.

“I have been carrying this since 2001,” Sparkle, whose real name is Stephanie Edwards, said in an interview in the days before the verdict arrived. “Finally, I can have some sense of normal — whatever normal looks like on the other end of this.”

She added: “This was really something that I took and put on my shoulders. I’m needing massages every other day, because this thing has been heavy.”

Sparkle was once R. Kelly’s protégée, providing backup vocals for Aaliyah’s debut album and releasing her own first album in 1998. The two records were both produced by Mr. Kelly, and hers went gold.

When Sparkle testified at Mr. Kelly’s first trial, her sister — the mother of her niece — maintained that the teenager in the sex tape was not her daughter. Her testimony fractured the family and her promising music career never fully recovered after the trial.

In its aftermath, Sparkle said her relationships with family members briefly recovered, before further deteriorating after she participated in the “Surviving R. Kelly” documentary.

“I don’t want to say happy because it’s not really a happy moment,” Sparkle said. “You just can’t even understand what my family has gone through.”

She added: “I don’t know that it will ever be the same.”

She said it was “mind-boggling” that the singer’s abuses spanned more than three decades, and emphasized that those around Mr. Kelly who allowed his behavior to continue were also to blame. “They helped this man do all of this stuff to these young girls,” she said. “Shame on them.”

Her niece, now a woman in her 30s, has cooperated with federal prosecutors in Chicago in recent years in their own case against the singer. Sparkle said she was not sure how she had been processing the singer’s current trial.

“But I hope she’s able to live a little bit more,” Sparkle said. “Even if she gets recognized, to not have such a backlash. I’m just hopeful that it’s all over.”

She added: “I wish and I pray that moving forward that Black women are listened to.”