After meeting R. Kelly at a McDonald’s drive-thru in 2006 when he was 17, a man testified Monday that the dishonored singer sexually assaulted him after promising to help with his music career.
“He asked me what I was willing to do for the music,” the 32-year-old told judges who told jurors at Kelly’s sex crime trial in federal court in Brooklyn. “He crawled on his knees towards me and proceeded to give me oral sex.”
The testimony is the first time a man has publicly accused Kelly of sexual misconduct and the fifth accuser to testify against the singer in his trial.
Louis told jurors that after meeting Kelly in December 2006 at his workplace, the singer slipped him a piece of paper with his phone number, which he gave to his mother. Throughout their relationship, Louis said, he had sex with Kelly several times, and usually registered.
“As our relationship grew stronger, he said he was like a brother. I was his little brother, ”Louis told jurors, adding that Kelly asked him to call him“ father, ”echoing the testimony of several accusing women.
At least one woman, who identified herself as Jane, told jurors that Kelly was also seduced by the false promise of professional tutoring. Other women have stated that they were abused emotionally and sometimes physically during their relationships with Kelly.
Although Louis’s allegations are not part of the indictment of nine charges against Kelly, Brooklyn prosecutors have argued that the 54-year-old man abused at least six women and girls, four of whom were minors. when he first had sexual contact with them. Kelly has pleaded guilty to the charges, which include mock-ups based on the abduction and sexual exploitation of children and violations of the Mann Act, which prohibits the transportation of people across state lines by sex.
To prove Kelly’s pattern of abuse, prosecutors also revealed that Kelly had sexual contact with at least two John Does when they were minors. The indictment indicates that Kelly allegedly met a John Doe in December 2006 at a McDonald’s in Chicago. The other John Doe, whom Kelly met when the individual was 16 or 17, was also forced to have filmed sex with the singer and several of his friends.
Jane testified last week that Kelly had also “prepared” at least one man, whom she only knew as a “nephew.”
“[R. Kelly] she said she had been preparing the nephew since she was young like me, “Jane said of the nephew, adding that she was forced to have sex with him on several occasions as” punishment. “
It is unclear whether Louis and his nephew knew each other, although Louis told the rostrum that he often took his friends to Kelly’s parties, including a 16-year-old boy the singer told him to wear because he was ” beautiful “funny.”
With a soft speech in the gallery, Luis told jurors Monday that after meeting Kelly at McDonald’s when he was a senior in high school, his mother contacted the singer to try to get an audition for Louis.
The conversation caused Louis and his parents to go to one of Kelly’s parties at his Olympia Fields mansion, where he said he met the singer and took a picture with him.
After the photo, Louis said, Kelly whispered in his ear, “Maybe I’d better come to the next party alone.”
Shortly afterwards, she said, her mother contacted Kelly and she was invited to come to the studio to do a test. There, she said, Kelly initially told her she had “some potential,” before saying she didn’t like the song Louis worked on with one of the singer’s sound engineers in the studio.
Louis said he continued to see Kelly after that initial session, often meeting with Kelly and her crew while they played basketball at a gym on the outskirts of Chicago. He said as he watched the group, he often saw “some women on the sidelines” wearing baby clothes.
Kelly once told him to come meet some fellow musicians, but Louis said that when he got to the Illinois mansion, there was only the singer. He said Kelly took him to a separate garage equipped as a boxing ring, where he began to ask him what he was willing to do for music.
During that conversation, where Kelly also asked him if he had fantasies about men, the singer gave him oral sex, Louis said. He added that Kelly finally stopped because the teen “didn’t engage in it.”
“He told me to keep it between him and me and he said we’re family now,” Louis said.
Louis said that sometimes Kelly made him have sex with other people, including a distressing encounter in the same independent garage.
“He bit his fingers twice and a young lady crawled under … the boxing ring. He told her to come here and she crawled and gave him oral sex,” Louis said, adding that Kelly also had women give him oral sex.
“I told him to say he liked it and to say my name,” he said, adding that while he “didn’t care” about the sexual contact itself, the encounter “was a strange situation.”
“I felt uncomfortable.”
Despite the sexual encounters Louis said he didn’t want, he continued to reunite with Kelly and go to the singer’s parties because he was pursuing a musical career, he stated.
“I was really looking forward to doing it in the music industry.”
Louis told jurors that despite the alleged abuse, he maintained a “friendship” with Kelly at least until 2018. He said the last time he saw Kelly was at his home in the Trump Tower, when the singer left him. ask him to write a letter “to protect me and him.”
“He told me word for word what he had to say,” Louis said, adding that the letter falsely suggested that someone was trying to pay him to say he and Kelly had a “homosexual relationship.”
Although it was the last time he saw Kelly, Louis admitted that he was later prosecuted for trying to bribe one of the singer’s accusers for “not cooperating with the government.” He noted that he eventually accepted a plan and tried to bribe, which led to his cooperation in the case and his testimony on Monday.
Louis, however, insisted that he did not bribe Kelly’s accuser to the singer’s direction and that the singer knew nothing of his plans.
Since Kelly’s arrest in 2019, at least three people have been charged with attempting to “intimidate, threaten or corruptly influence” Kelly’s accusers. In February, one pleaded guilty to trying to bribe a woman – who said he stayed with Kelly when she was 17 – in exchange for her silence.