A woman who said she was sexually assaulted by R. Kelly as a teenager said Monday to Brooklyn federal court jurors that she also witnessed the singer, Aaliyah, a minor R&B star in the back of his tourist bus in 1992 or 1993.
At the time, Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001, would have been 13 or 14 years old.
“[I] he opened the door slightly and saw Robert and Aaliyah in a sexual situation, “the woman, who identified herself in the gallery as” Angela “and said she worked as a secondary singer during the crime trial, told jurors sex of Kelly.
“It looked like he was having oral sex,” she added about the incident, noting that Aaliyah was sitting “with her legs open” and that Kelly was “on her knees, between her legs.”
The alleged incident occurred at least a year before Kelly’s secret marriage to Aaliyah, who was only 15 at the time of the ceremony. During Kelly’s trial, witnesses and prosecutors have said that in order to marry her, Kelly bribed an Illinois state official for misidentifying the teen.
The shocking allegations suggest that Kelly’s predation of underage girls was even younger than previously reported. Along with the bomb that allegedly assaulted Angela in 1991, when she was 14 or 15, the witness offered some of the most detailed evidence that Kelly took advantage of Aaliyah when she was little.
Prosecutors have accused Kelly of allegedly abusing at least six women and girls, four of them minors at the time. While Kelly is not charged with crimes against Angela, her testimony could be crucial in the prosecution’s argument that the singer had a pattern of predatory behavior supported by her employees.
“We were taught from day one to protect Robert,” Angela told the jurors.
Kelly, 54, faces charges that include mock-ups based on kidnappings, child sexual exploitation, and forced labor; he is also accused of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits the transportation of people across state lines by sex. The singer has pleaded guilty to all charges against him and has repeatedly denied any offense.
Angela testified Monday that she met Kelly in 1991, when she was invited to the singer’s apartment in Chicago for a party during the summer holidays before her sophomore year of high school.
During that encounter, Angela said, Kelly had a series of “ladies” come into her room one by one to have some sort of sexual contact with him. When Angela was asked to enter Kelly’s room, the singer told her to “climb on top of him” while other “ladies in the room” undressed, she said.
“I was surprised. I wasn’t sure what to do. But I did what she said, ”Angela said, adding that she was invited back to Kelly’s apartment the next day.
Angela said she then saw Kelly “every day for quite a few years” and eventually became the singer’s safety dancer. During that time, he said, Kelly forced her and the other dancers to have sex with him as payment.
“He told us to pay our dues; it was a requirement to be around,” Angela said, adding that she would also say “bring me some girls or bring me new talent.”
In January 1992, Angela said, Kelly introduced Aaliyah to her and another security dancer, calling her “the hottest wave coming out of Detroit.” Breaking into the bleachers, Angela remembered how Kelly told Aaliyah that the two girls would work together.
“We were going to give her a street vibe and we would be there to be her friends too,” Angela said, adding that at that first meeting, Kelly admitted it was Aaliyah’s birthday and she had just turned up. the 13 years.
“She was his protégée,” Angela said, adding that she saw Aayliah work with Kelly on her first album, notoriously titled, “Age is nothing more than a number.”
Months later, during one of Kelly’s tours, Angela said, she learned something much more sinister.
He told jurors that they accidentally got Kelly and Aaliyah in the back of their tour bus while they were at a stop in Washington, DC. Angela said she never confronted Kelly for what she saw.
During the tour stop, Angela said Kelly had been angry with her several times, once for going to a pool with Aaliyah and some other security dancers. Again, he said, Kelly got angry with the girls because they were leaving the hotel without their permission.
“Robert told us all we should go out. It was time to pay the fees, ”he said, noting to the jury that he had finally escaped a cycle of abuse.
The witness said he stopped working for Kelly in the “mid-1990s” and never talked about sexual violence until Monday.
“I was embarrassed. I never wanted anyone to know I was in this situation. Not at all,” he said.
Several other women have said they were sexually assaulted by Kelly, including an accuser who said she was assaulted by him after being locked up in her studio for days. After the assault, she told jurors, that one of Kelly’s associates threatened her with keeping quiet and not “fucking with Mr. Kelly.”
The woman, identified at the booth as Sonja, told jurors Thursday that in 2003 she traveled to Chicago to interview Kelly while she was a 21-year-old intern on a Salt Lake City radio station. When she arrived, Sonja said, Kelly’s associates made her sign an NDA before locking her in a studio room for “three or four days” without food or water. When she finally got food, she immediately became “extremely full and tired,” she said.
Just after waking up, Sonja said, she saw Kelly in the corner of the room “putting on her pants” and noticed that her underwear was resting on an armchair. “I was sexually assaulted. There was something in me that was not invited, “he said.
Another indictment told jurors that Kelly forced her to have sex in a Miami locker room after one of her shows in September 1994, when she was just 17 years old.
The alleged assault occurred just two days after Kelly’s secret marriage to Aaliyah. In February 1996, Aaliyah’s marriage to Kelly was annulled by her parents.
Kelly is also said to have taken on at least two John Does when they were minors, including “Louis,” who told jurors he met the singer at a McDonald’s in Chicago in 2006. He said that during their relationship of more than ten years with Kelly, who started when he was 17, the singer sexually assaulted him several times after promising to help with his music career.
The second John Doe, whom Kelly met when he was 16 or 17, was also forced to have filmed sex with the singer and several of his friends. Kelly is not charged with the alleged crimes against the two men.