R. Kelly Faces Up To 100 Years In Federal Prison

     I'm not going to get into the usual thing I do with my "Celebrity Rapist Spotlight" stories. Everyone knows who R. Kelly is; at least, they thought they did. Instead of focusing on the career of a man once dubbed the "King of R&B," it's time we focus on the victims in this case. I understand Kelly had a rough life: no father, a life below the poverty line, sexual abuse for eight years by an older female and at least once by an older male, a bullet wound from a suicide attempt, and the death of a childhood best friend he vowed to marry.

     However, that's no excuse for what he did. At age 27, he married 15-year-old star Aaliyah, whom he had known since she was 12 and had been having sexual relations with since she was 13. Demetrius Smith, his tour manager, obtained false papers claiming Aaliyah was 18. After years of denial at having been victimized, Aaliyah's annulled marriage was expunged. In 1998, he paid $250,000 to Tiffany Hawkins, who, at 15, was introduced to others by Kelly for group sex. In 2002, he was arrested after appearing in a video urinating on and raping an underaged girl; he was acquitted on the charges in 2008 only after the poor girl could not bring herself to testify. The smug bastard had the nerve to claim he was not the man in the video, even when Florida detectives found 12 images of a naked underaged girl wrapped in the same towel that appeared in this video. Because he was acquitted in the child rape case, a judge ruled the officers lacked probable cause in the child porn case and dismissed the charges. In 2017, it was revealed by three sets of parents that Kelly kept their daughters in an emotionally- and physically-abusive sex cult. In 2018, it was revealed that Kelly had intentionally infected a female victim with an STI. In 2019, Asante McGee revealed that she had lived with R. Kelly and other women and girls for months and that, while there, Kelly controlled every aspect of their lives. In 2019, he was taken into custody for the sexual abuse of a woman and three girls between 1998 and 2010. That year, he was also charged in Minnesota for an incident in which he paid an underaged girl to dance naked with him. In 2020, it was revealed that his former wife Andrea had accused him of molesting a preteen girl in 2009. It's not just girls: years ago, Kelly met an underaged boy at McDonald's and had sex with him. In spite of at least 14 confirmed victims either coming forward or having relatives come forward, Kelly called them liars, went on emotional rampages when interviewed about the cases, and even started a short-lived Facebook page aimed at discrediting victims and threatening them by exposing their personal information.

     Today, on September 27th, 2021, we got a first taste of justice. R. Kelly will forever be remembered as nothing but a sexual predator. He has already spent the past two years behind bars. With the charge of racketeering carrying up to 20 years and each of the eight charges of sex trafficking carrying 10 years, he faces up to 100 years in federal prison; federal prisoners must serve at least 85 percent of their sentences before they are released. More likely, he will face a sentence in the range of 30 to 40 years, but that alone is enough to put the 54-year-old where he belongs for the rest of his life. I want to thank the victims and families who came forward to seek justice as well as Tamra Simmons, Dream Hampton, John Legend, and all the others who produced or appeared in Surviving R. Kelly. Without this people power, I sincerely believe Kelly would still be on the streets today. I also want to remind everyone that he will still appeal this case and that he still has state charges pending in Minnesota in Illinois. However, pending sentencing on May 4th, 2022, all those who were victimized and all those unknown people who might have been victimized in the future are breathing a huge sigh of relief.

     This is a unique case because it involves accusers who are mostly people of color, but it is also one too common, as the #MeToo movement has taught us. The COVID-19 pandemic drove the legal system to a near halt, and, therefore, 2021 has seen numerous powerful people, including Drake Bell, Harvey Weinstein, and Danny Masterson, held to account all at once. Keep raising your voices so they cannot be ignored and we will keep putting these prominent predators away forever.