R. Kelly Hit With New Criminal Charges In New York Rape Case
As expected, prosecutors have thrown additional criminal charges at R. Kelly, this time in his New York rape case, over claims he distributed the herpes disease to an underage girl and a woman, without disclosing prior to intercourse.
On Friday (Mar 13), the additional charges were given in a new indictment, accusing the 52-year-old R&B singer of giving the disease to the two new victims in 2015 and 2017. The indictment also states that he allegedly recorded sexual encounters with the underage girl at a later point.
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Specifically, the new charges include coercion of a minor, which carries a minimum 10-year sentence, and transportation of a minor across state lines. Additionally, the singer is facing new federal racketeering charges for a scheme that included trafficking women and underage girls from his shows. He faces a total of nine federal charges in New York and thirteen in Illinois.
While he awaits Brooklyn trial for May 18, he’s currently being held in a federal jail in Chicago, where he’ll be tried first before extradition.
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Continued…
On the new reports, Kelly’s attorney, Doug Anton, tells TMZ, “It seems that the government has sought to add additional allegations as to alleged conduct, with what they believe to be more specificity. Why these alleged facts relating to conduct were not known by the government until now, or included in the indictment until now, raises questions for my defense team to take an interest in.”
Anton adds, “It is unclear why the government, in speaking to Jane Doe #3, for example, would not have garnered from her these additional factual allegations in the over one year they have been speaking with her already.”
He concludes, “These are serious criminal allegations. 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.”