Global music icon R Kelly has handed himself into police in the US after being charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sex abuse against four victims, three of them minors.
The musician surrendered to Chicago police at approximately 8.15pm last evening (5.15 am in the morning, Ugandan time) and was immediately taken into custody.
The development comes after a judge approved a no-bail arrest warrant for the 52-year-old, who for decades has faced accusations of child pornography, sex with minors, operating a sex cult and sexual battery.
He will appear in court tomorrow afternoon, a police spokesman said.
Chicago’s state lawyer for Cook County Kim Foxx told journalists the alleged crimes occurred between 1998 and 2010. A court clerk had earlier told AFP nine of the charges involve minors ages 13 to 16.
The felony charges carry three to seven years of prison time per count, Foxx said.
After Kelly was booked his lawyer Steve Greenberg dismissed the charges, saying they were based on old and false accusations.
Greenberg vowed the musician would be “vindicated,” saying “I think all of the women are lying”.Everybody’s trying to profit off of R Kelly.
A court date was scheduled for 8 March in Chicago, where he resides, a Cook County clerk said earlier.
It is the second time Chicago prosecutors have charged Kelly with a sex crime: after a dramatic trial that also involved a sex tape, the musician was acquitted of 21 counts of child pornography in 2008.
Greenberg said one of the charges involved the same victim as in that trial.
‘Day of reckoning’
“Today marks a watershed moment in the 25 years of abuse by this predator,” said high-profile lawyer Michael Avenatti, who is representing two victims, two parents and two whistle-blowers linked to Kelly.
Avenatti and prominent women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred are representing clients linked to Kelly, with the former saying his office had uncovered previously unreleased footage of Kelly having sex with a teenager, which he had given to the Cook County State’s Attorney.
Avenatti – who also represents a porn star locked in a legal battle with US President Donald Trump – told journalists yesterday the approximately 40-minute tape shot in the late 1990s “leaves no question” of Kelly’s guilt, and that both the victim and the musician refer multiple times to her age as 14.
The attorney vowed to go after Kelly’s “enablers”, who he said “turned a blind eye while teenage girls were sexually assaulted for over two decades”.
“They did not want to kill the golden goose,” the lawyer said.
(Adapted from www.mirror.co.uk)
