For the first time in two decades of swirling allegations, R. Kelly’s former goddaughter has stood as a prosecution witness in a trial against the disgraced singer.
The woman, now 37, who testified under the alias “Jane” at Kelly’s federal trial in Chicago, wore a white blazer with long pigtails and told jurors she first had sexual contact with Kelly when she was 14.
Her sexual acts escalated to intercourse when she was 15, she said. When asked by a prosecutor how she knew her exact age, Jane calmly replied, “Because that’s when I lost my virginity.”
After that, they had sex “countless times,” sometimes with other teenage girls that Jane had recruited at Kelly’s request, she said. The encounters took place at Kelly’s home on West George Street, at his Near West Side recording studio, on tour buses and at hotels in Chicago and elsewhere, she said.
Two of the other minor victims are also scheduled to testify against Kelly later in the trial.
To illustrate how young she looked at the time of the encounters, prosecutors had Jane identify two photos of herself from her childhood. The first one, taken when she was a sophomore in high school, showed her on one knee, holding a basketball, smiling. The other was a headshot while she was in a music group when she was 13 — around the time she first met Kelly.
“Jane” is expected to testify later Thursday that she was in fact the girl depicted in infamous video footage of Kelly being sexually assaulted.
Jane and her parents had denied for years that Kelly had ever had an inappropriate relationship with her. Jane was not subpoenaed at Kelly’s 2008 Cook County child pornography trial, although county prosecutors claimed she was the girl on the tape.
Federal prosecutors allege that Kelly and his associates paid Jane and her family and covered up other videotapes to rig his Cook County trial. He was acquitted of these charges in 2008.
Jane said in a low voice that she was impressed by the stars when she first met Kelly in the 1990s, especially after he attended a performance of their music group and gave her good feedback.
“It made me happy to have such a successful person say I was gifted, so I was excited,” she said.
At age 12 or 13, she began attending Kelly’s studio regularly, along with her aunt, Stephanie “Sparkle” Edwards, a protégé of Kelly’s.
Edwards advised her to ask Kelly to be her godfather, she testified.
“[She said]I should sit on his lap and rub his head and ask him to play that role in my life,” Jane testified. She did, and Kelly “laughed a little and said yes.”
After that, their relationship took a sexual turn, Jane said. She would have long phone calls with him that eventually became explicit, she said. She was 13 years old.
Kelly also first introduced her to alcohol when she was 14, and she began drinking heavily.
“It would help me loosen up, kind of get out of the moment,” she testified.
Jane has remained calm on the stand so far, her eyes on the prosecutor who is asking her questions, pausing sometimes to brush her braids off her shoulder or wipe her eyelashes.
Kelly has shown little outside reaction to her statement. When it came time for the witness to identify Kelly in the courtroom, US District Judge Harry Leinenweber ordered everyone in the room to remove their masks, then Jane said she saw the singer sitting at the defense table in a blue suit jacket.
After Assistant US Attorney Jeannice Appenteng asked Jane to identify another item of clothing Kelly was wearing, Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said loudly into her microphone, “So determined. It’s Mr Kelly!’
Prosecutors had previously put on the stand a man who bought a large home in Lakeview in 2001: a converted church with a swimming pool and basketball court, and a hair salon. The previous owner, to find out, was R. Kelly.
Kelly allegedly filmed at least one of the videos at issue in his federal indictment at this home, and in 2002 police evidence technicians stopped by to take photos, including images of the wood-paneled room depicted on the tape.
After Matthew Hulsizer moved in, he found that a smoke alarm in at least one of the bedrooms wasn’t a smoke alarm at all – it was hiding a small hidden video camera. And to exit the bedroom, you had to push a button, he said, a feature he removed because he felt it was a security risk.
A basketball court at the George Street home commemorated Kelly’s success with a large cartoon mural painted on one wall depicting Looney Tunes characters from the movie Space Jam, which of course featured Kelly’s Grammy-winning song.
The cartoon featured an image of Kelly on the pitch in a red uniform and sunglasses, according to photos presented by the government, playing with the Tasmanian devil. The cartoon scoreboard showed him winning by two points with a second remaining. Some of the cartoon characters, including Tweety Bird and Marvin the Martian, held up signs.
The “Colorado room” looked like the interior of a log cabin with faux wood walls and an accent wall that looked like engineered stone. A large whirlpool dominated the room, also embedded in wood paneling.
Photos of the master bedroom provided by prosecutors included close-ups of the “escape” button and smoke detector on the ceiling, where the new owner said he found a small hidden video camera.
Kelly sat dressed in a dark blue suit. Before the court began, a marshal came to the table to demand a tie for him, telling his attorneys, “He wants the brown one today.”
Testimony resumed Thursday with cross-examination of a retired Chicago police detective who was investigating initial allegations that Kelly had sexually abused his teenage goddaughter.
On Thursday, Daniel Everett reiterated again to the point that when he spoke to “Jane” and her parents in 2000, they denied that the girl had any sort of improper relationship with Kelly.
A little over a year later, he received a tape from then-Chicago Sun Times journalist Jim DeRogatis and recognized “Jane” from the footage. This video became the focus of Kelly’s Cook County court case 20 years ago.
Defense attorneys cracked down on chain-of-custody issues related to the tape. Everett noted that he recently saw a copy of the footage and the content is the same, but he doesn’t know where the original VHS tape is.
Upon cross-examining Bonjean, Everett found that he had also interviewed a friend of Jane’s in 2002. This person is expected to later testify in court under the pseudonym “Pinky”.
There is no evidence in Everett’s reports that the minor Pinky told him she had had sexual contact with Kelly, Everett testified. And while there were concerns that a videotape showed images of Pinky being abused when Everett showed her and her mother stills from the tape, they denied any involvement, he testified.
The prosecution’s very first witness was a psychologist, whose testimony was intended to provide context or explanation for the behavior of some witnesses, including the fact that victims often keep their abuse secret for years.
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The tape, said to have been filmed in this Lakeview home, is one of four at the center of the child pornography charges against Kelly, who, along with his former associates Derrel McDavid and Milton “June” Brown, is also accused of conspiring to to tamper with his 2008 process.
In opening statements, prosecutors portrayed Kelly as a serial predator who had sexual contact with underage girls hundreds of times over the years. Five women, including “Pinky” and “Jane”, are expected to testify during the trial that Kelly sexually abused them when they were teenagers.
Bonjean, meanwhile, said the prosecution’s case “really depends on testimonies from liars, extortionists and (and) people involved in the pornography trade.”
Opening statements began Wednesday after two full days of jury selection. The 12 jurors and six alternates were sworn in late Tuesday; A juror was replaced by an alternate on Wednesday morning after a medical issue arose. They are expected to hear evidence and arguments over the next four weeks.