CHICAGO (CN) — As R. Kelly's federal trial in Chicago enters its third week, yet more women have taken the witness stand to claim that Kelly had sex with them while they were minors. One, going by the pseudonym Tracy, has brought forward the most serious allegations yet against the former singer.
When she was 16 in 1999, Tracy said, Kelly raped her.
She described an alleged 1999 incident in a Westin hotel room in Chicago in which Kelly first made her take off her clothes and performed oral sex on her, then made her perform oral sex on him. She told the court he then forced himself on her for penetrative intercourse, though she added "he stopped when I told him to stop."
"I had never had any kind of sexual contact with anyone," Tracy said.
Tracy says this encounter happened in the course of her employment with Sony Music's Epic Records label, while working as an intern for Epic Records Promotions Manager Cathy Carroll. Tracy said that part of her job was to help wine and dine different artists.
"We would go out to dinners with artists... we would go to parties," Tracy said.
Tracy said Carroll introduced her to Kelly at Hoops, a basketball gym in Chicago, in 1999. Over the course of the next several weeks, Tracy said she was invited several times to Kelly's Chicago Trax recording studio, where she initially rebuffed his advances before finally agreeing to meet him in his studio office. There, she said, Kelly masturbated on her to climax against her wishes.
"When I looked down he had exposed himself... he was pleasuring himself," she said.
The hotel room encounter in which Kelly allegedly raped her came not long after. Through tears, she recounted that she was also soon recruited to have videotaped threesomes with Kelly and another underage girl called "Jane." Jane testified against Kelly earlier in the trial.
"I just didn't understand why the other girl was there. They seemed real familiar with each other, like they knew what was about to happen and I didn't," Tracy said. She added that she and Kelly stopped having sex after she turned 18.
Despite the alleged sexual abuse, she said she never told her parents or police about what has happening before turning 18, as she had developed feelings for Kelly.
"I loved Rob, I didn't want him to get in trouble," Tracy said, though she filed a civil lawsuit against him in August 2001 for $250,000. She was 19 at the time.
Tracy's rape allegations are among the strongest accusations brought against Kelly since the trial began, and had a tangible affect on the courtroom. Kelly's lead defense attorney Jennifer Bonjean attempted to regroup from her emotional testimony by pointing out that Tracy did not mention the alleged sexual assault to Cook County State's Attorney Office investigators in 2002, when she offered testimony leading up to Kelly's indictment on 21 state child porn charges.
Tracy said she omitted the Westin incident in her 2002 statement because she still had feelings for Kelly at the time. Bonjean scoffed at this suggestion.
"You loved him so much that you didn't tell them about [Kelly raping you], but not so much that you told them about the threesome?" Bonjean said.
Bonjean also brought up the paperwork from Tracy's 2001 civil lawsuit against Kelly. The complaint states that Tracy met Kelly in April 2000 when she would have been 17, the legal age of consent in Illinois. Tracy said that the date in the complaint was mistaken.
"The date was changed," she said, "I'm assuming it was [my attorney] or one of her staff."
Bonjean, again, scoffed at this claim.
It was not the only point on Monday that Bonjean butted heads with one of the government's witnesses. Before Tracy took the stand, another woman going by the pseudonym "Pauline" gave her own testimony. Unlike Tracy, Pauline was unapologetically candid while recounting her alleged underage sexual encounters with Kelly — and openly contemptuous of Bonjean during cross-examination.
When Bonjean asked her at what age she began having sex with Kelly, Pauline took the opportunity to levy a veiled insult at the defense attorney.
"Are you asking about actually doing it, or sucking? They're two different things. I'm sure you know that," Pauline told Bonjean. She then clarified that she began having sexual encounters with Kelly at age 14, and had full intercourse with him starting from age 15.
Pauline went on to say that she had "a lot" of threesomes with Kelly and Jane, who was her friend from school, between the ages of 14 and 16. Similarly, she said she had multiple threesomes with Kelly and her friend "Brittany" between the ages of 15 and 16.
"[Kelly] taught me how to give oral sex on him and Jane," Pauline said.
Bonjean pointed out that Pauline was offering much of this information for the first time on Monday; that it was not included in her 2002 testimony to the Cook County grand jury. She accused Pauline of lying to the grand jury in 2002, which Pauline did not deny.
"I sure did [lie]... because I wasn't going to admit that in front of my mom, for anybody, period," Pauline said.
When Bonjean informed her that lying to a grand jury was a crime, Pauline brushed it off. Lots of people get away with crimes, she said.
Bonjean, flustered, then asked why Pauline even chose to appear at this trial at all, if that was her perspective. Pauline responded it was only because federal prosecutors "found her," and requested her cooperation. Despite everything, she said she did not bear Kelly any ill-will.
She even characterized two times she demanded money from Kelly — $35,000 and $50,000 respectively — for the return of alleged sex tapes she took from him as a bluff. She was "just trying to get his attention," she said, after he was being "a bad boyfriend" and not returning her calls.
"He calls it extortion, I call it 'Don't play with me,'" Pauline said.
Kelly faces 13 criminal charges in Chicago, including four counts of sexual coercion of minors. He is already serving 30 years in federal prison for a 2021 sex trafficking conviction, and being found guilty on even a handful of his Chicago charges could add decades to his sentence.
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