Named in court documents only as “Jane Does,” they were given permission to testify or be referred to by their first names or pseudonyms.Īccording to Cruz Melendez, Kelly knew he had a problem when he believed Aaliyah got pregnant, which the prosecutor noted would raise questions. The alleged victims specified in the prosecution’s opening statement were all female: Four of the alleged victims-Aaliyah, Stephanie, Jerhonda, Zel-were minors, and two others-Sonja and Faith-were young women, the prosecutor told jurors.
“The defendant quickly learned that he could take advantage of his access-and he did,” the prosecutor said, whether it was access to a “girl, a boy, or a young woman.” When Kelly’s career took off the early 1990s, Cruz Melendez said, the singer’s success and popularity brought him “access.” The prosecutor claimed that the defendant’s coterie of managers, assistants and runners helped recruit his victims, pressured them into signing non-disclosure agreements, and give them hundreds of thousands of dollars “hush money” settlement payments to keep the scheme going. Kelly.”Ĭharged with violating federal racketeering law and the Mann Act, Kelly has been depicted as the leader of an “enterprise” run for his own sexual gratification. Identifying the accused predator by his full and his stage name, the prosecutor added: “That man, that predator, is the defendant, Robert Sylvester Kelly, more commonly known as R. Attorney Maria Cruz Melendez told the jury, in the first sentence of her opening remarks. “This case is about a predator,” Assistant U.S. Kelly systematically groomed women and girls into a pattern of abuse-some, like the late “Queen of Urban Pop” Aaliyah, when they were minors-with the help of an “inner circle” of employees who silenced his victims, a federal prosecutor told jurors at the dramatic start of the disgraced singer’s long-anticipated trial.
0 kommentar(er)
