A third woman accused R. Kelly of exposing her to herpes, and the minister who married the singer to Aaliyah when the bride was only 15 years old spoke publicly for the first time Wednesday, the 10th day of Kelly’s racketeering trial in Brooklyn.
The woman, who is testifying using only her first name, Faith, accused Kelly of exposing her to herpes. Faith, whose testimony began Tuesday, said the singer did not inform her that he had the incurable disease before they began having sex and that he often declined to use a condom.
“I said, ‘Are you going to use a condom?,’ " she recalled asking Kelly during their first sexual encounter. “He said, ‘We don’t need a condom.’ "
Five of the accusers who have testified said that they were underage when their sexual encounters with Kelly began. But Faith told jurors that she was 19 when she first met the entertainer at a concert in Texas in 2017, and they began a sexual relationship of about 11 months shortly after.
The singer, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, has denied the accusations and pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, which include a single count of racketeering and eight counts of violating an interstate anti-sex trafficking law known as the Mann Act.
Federal prosecutors have accused Kelly, 54, of running a decades-long criminal plot that used his fame – and a network of associates and employees – to prey on women and girls for sex.
Here’s what happened on the 10th day of testimony:
Nathan Edmond had never heard of the R&B singers whom he was asked to marry in 1994. That marriage of Kelly and Aaliyah has been central to the case against Kelly.
The pair were married in 1994, when he was 27 and she was 15. Kelly had come to believe that Aaliyah, who died in 2001, might have been pregnant with his child, other witnesses have testified.
Edmond said he was presented with a confidentiality agreement by one of Kelly’s male associates when he arrived at the Chicago area hotel where the wedding occurred.
“I kind of chuckled,” he said. “If it was supposed to be a confidentiality agreement, it should’ve been a lot more airtight than that.”
Edmond said the man instead asked if he would give his word that he would not discuss the wedding. He said he agreed and had not spoken publicly about it until Wednesday.
At the ceremony, Kelly and Aaliyah emerged from another room in “matching jogging suits” and exchanged vows, and in “10 minutes or less” the proceedings were over, Edmond recalled.
He said he was offered $25 or $50 for his services. But, he added, he “was just doing it as a favour” for a friend and said he found the entire situation odd.
“I didn’t think it was anybody special,” he said. “I didn’t understand it at all.”
Faith, the sixth accuser to take the stand against Kelly, told jurors on Wednesday that shortly after her final sexual encounter with the singer in 2018, she began to develop cold symptoms – and that later her mouth had “bumps everywhere.”
She testified that she went to urgent care and later to her OB-GYN, who diagnosed her with type 1 herpes. “I was in shock,” she said.
Faith told jurors that she reached out to Kelly several times, but that he never responded.
“I really just wanted him to maybe give me answers – or just acknowledge that he did it,” Faith testified. “I knew it was him.”
She said she contacted a lawyer in her home state, Texas, and later received a call from Kelly after she had texted him repeatedly. Faith testified that she asked him why he did not disclose that he had the disease.
“He said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if I did know what you’re talking about, we’re not going to talk about it over the phone,’ " Faith recalled.
Faith became the third woman to testify that she contracted herpes after the singer exposed them to the disease without notifying them that he had been infected. The first accuser to speak at his trial, Jerhonda Pace, told jurors that she, too, contracted the disease from him around 2009 – and that she was not warned beforehand. Another woman said she contracted the disease during her sexual encounters with the singer, and that before she was treated, the pain was so intense she struggled to walk at times.
One of Kelly’s long-time doctors, Kris McGrath, testified earlier in the trial that the singer was being treated for the incurable disease by 2007, and that he had instructed Kelly to notify any sexual partners that he had it.
Faith, who is now 24, first met Kelly at a concert in San Antonio in 2017. She received a pass to go backstage, the singer gave his phone number to her and the two began a months-long sexual relationship.
During their interactions, Faith said Kelly often pressured her to have sex and recorded their encounters – but because she was an adult at the time, her involvement in Kelly’s case centres on the herpes diagnosis. Kelly’s defence team did not address the herpes accusations in its cross-examination, but instead focused on casting Faith’s interactions with the singer as consensual.
“You made a choice,” said Deveraux Cannick, one of the singer’s four lawyers. He said that Faith had communicated with Kelly for months and made repeated trips to see him, adding “you participated of your own will.”
Faith told jurors she sometimes had sex with the singer despite not wanting to. In one instance, Faith said, she entered a room with Kelly and noticed a gun on an ottoman there. She told jurors she was “intimidated,” and that the singer grabbed her neck and forced her to perform a sex act on him.
Throughout the trial, Kelly’s facial expressions have been hidden by a mask. But the singer appeared more animated – shaking his head and rubbing his forehead – while Faith described a failed sexual encounter with the singer in which she clenched her body to avoid penetrative sex. He reacted similarly as Faith recalled that he later masturbated to a video he had made of different women, some of whom he had told her he was “raising.”
Faith, who told jurors that she appeared in the Surviving R. Kelly documentary series on Lifetime, testified that she met with one of Kelly’s employees before the series aired.
The employee, Faith said, brought a file that included profiles and compromising photographs of some of the accusers featured in the documentary. Faith said she was told that they would be released if she continued her participation, and a week after the documentary aired, a Facebook page was created that included posts with nude photographs of her.
Prosecutors also reviewed a letter Kelly sent Faith after she filed a lawsuit against him in New York, in which the entertainer threatened to ruin her reputation if she proceeded. In the letter, signed by Kelly, the singer described her lawsuit as a “heartless effort” to destroy his musical legacy, and claimed he could bring 10 male witnesses to testify about her sex life.
In the letter, he said that Faith had chosen to call him “Daddy” and that their age difference had only become a problem to her once their interactions concluded. He also included photographs of Faith partially dressed, adding that he had cropped some photographs and that he would not share them publicly “yet!!!”
U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly, who is presiding over the trial, warned visitors Wednesday that they would lose access to the courthouse if they did not “behave,” after a prosecutor said that Faith’s father had been verbally accosted the day before.
Nadia Shihata, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the judge that there had been “audible, negative reactions to testimony” in overflow rooms of the courthouse, where members of the public and the media have watched the proceedings because of the pandemic.
As Faith’s father left Tuesday, she said, he was approached by a supporter of the singer who called her “stupid,” followed by an expletive.
Only a handful of members of the public have turned out at the singer’s trial each day, and Wednesday was the first time that prosecutors had discussed a confrontation between a visitor and a witness’s relative.
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