BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CN) — A new set of federal charges against R. Kelly in Brooklyn accuses the incarcerated singer of not disclosing that he has herpes in two instances of alleged forced sexual contact.
Eastern District of New York prosecutors brought their first indictment of Kelly in June 2019 but have been steadily adding charges over a series of superseding indictments. Names for Kelly’s alleged victims are always withheld, with updated indictments tending to include a new Jane Doe for already charged conduct, such as creating images of child sexual abuse.
“These are serious criminal allegations,” Kelly’s New Jersey lawyer Doug Anton said in a statement Friday. “How does an alleged victim ‘forget’ such things? Or... perhaps... these allege victims are not victims at all, but only women who have been told and instructed, even peer pressured if you will, years later, that the claimed relationship they freely and voluntarily engaged in, should now, in the #metoo era, be classified as “bad” or “abusive,” and they are continually seeking to add facts, even if not truthful, to their story, to make the alleged events as salacious as humanly possible. That is NOT what our judicial system is for.”
In the 22-page document filed Friday morning, the Grammy-winning Kelly also faces charges of reckless endangerment, forced labor, sex with minors, violations of New York health law and the California health and safety code,
violations of the federal Mann Act, including transportation of a minor, and coercion and enticement for a minor to travel to have sex with him.
“Hire a literary agent instead and put out your book of fiction, in which you can claim anything you want, subject only to the laws against defamation,” Anton continued in his statement, of Kelly’s alleged victims. He has previously referred to their allegations as cases of “groupie remorse.”
Allegations of sexual abuse, both of adults and of minors, have dogged the “Trapped in the Closet” singer for decades, and he faces a litany of federal and state charges across the country, including in Minnesota and Chicago.
Kelly argued through his lawyer Steve Greenberg last month that the racketeering charges against him in Brooklyn should be dropped. Those say he directed members of his entourage to recruit a sex ring of young women and underage girls, but Greenberg objected, saying the government constructed a fake enterprise to get around the statute of limitations on sexual-abuse cases.
Kelly pleaded not guilty in August to the previous set of Brooklyn charges, which accused him of bribing an official to create a fake ID for Aaliyah when she was just 15 so he could marry her. That charge still appears in Friday’s indictment.
Lawyers for R. Kelly, Douglas Anton in New Jersey and Steven Greenberg in Chicago, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.
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