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Lawyers for American singer and convicted sex offender, Robert Sylvester Kelly (aka R.Kelly) have sued the Brooklyn jail where he is being held after being sentenced to 30 years in prison for sex trafficking and abusing young girls.
TheNewsGuru.com (TNG) reports that R. Kelly’s Lawyers sued Brooklyn prison for placing him on suicide watch ‘as punishment’ after he was sentenced.
The disgraced R&B star was “illegally placed” on suicide watch on Friday at the MDC in Brooklyn, his atttorney Jennifer Bonjean said.
“R. Kelly is not suicidal. He was in fine spirits after his sentencing hearing and ready to fight this appeal,” Bonjean added.
Bonjean said she believed the 55-year-old was put under suicide watch for “punitive reasons”.
In her words: “Mr. Kelly was placed on suicide watch for purely punitive reasons in violation of his Eighth Amendment rights. MDC has a policy of placing high profile individuals under the harsh conditions of suicide watch whether they are suicidal or not. MDC Brooklyn is being run like a gulag.”
On Wednesday, Judge Ann M. Donnelly handed down Kelly’s 30-year sentence in the Brooklyn Federal Court
Kelly was convicted of sex-trafficking and racketeering charges last September following a six-week trial that amplified accusations.
Kelly was convicted of sex-trafficking and racketeering charges last September following a six-week trial that amplified accusations.
The ‘I Believe I Can Fly Singer’ has committed the heinous acts for decades before he was convicted.
Kelly declined to speak at his sentences after the court heard accusations from angered victims about how the singer preyed on them.
Aside from his 30 year sentence, he must also pay a $100,000 fine. It’s unclear where Kelly will spend his sentence.
Donnelly told Kelly he created ‘a trail of broken lives,’ adding that ‘the most seasoned investigators will not forget the horrors your victims endured.’
‘These crimes were calculated and carefully planned and regularly executed for almost 25 years,’ she said. ‘You taught them that love is enslavement and violence.’
Kelly, who declined to speak at his sentencing, learned his fate after some of his accusers told the court, through tears and anger, that he had preyed on them and misled his fans. He was also was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.
Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, has been detained at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since his trial. It has not been revealed where Kelly would spend his sentence.
Lizzette Martinez, one of the victims who spoke earlier at the hearing, said she doesn’t think Kelly’s sentence is enough ‘but I’m pleased with it.’
Martinez, who described herself to the reporters as an ‘up-and-coming singer, a girl full of life’ before she met R Kelly and became ‘a sex slave.’
The sentence caps a slow-motion fall for Kelly, who was adored by legions of fans and sold millions of albums even after allegations about his abuse of young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s.
Widespread outrage over Kelly’s sexual misconduct didn’t come until the #MeToo reckoning, reaching a crescendo after the release of the docuseries ‘Surviving R. Kelly.’
Kelly’s lawyers had argued he should get no more than 10 years in prison because he had a traumatic childhood ‘involving severe, prolonged childhood sexual abuse, poverty, and violence.’
As an adult with ‘literacy deficiencies,’ the star was ‘repeatedly defrauded and financially abused, often by the people he paid to protect him,’ his lawyers said.
Allegations that Kelly abused young girls began circulating publicly in the 1990s. He was sued in 1997 by a woman who alleged sexual battery and sexual harassment while she was a minor, and he later faced criminal child pornography charges related to a different girl in Chicago. A jury there acquitted him in 2008, and he settled the lawsuit.
But last year, the jury convicted the ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ hitmaker after hearing about how he used his entourage of managers and aides to meet girls and keep them obedient, an operation prosecutors said amounted to a criminal enterprise.
Several accusers testified that Kelly subjected them to perverse and sadistic whims when they were underage.
The accusers alleged they were ordered to sign nondisclosure forms and were subjected to threats and punishments such as violent spankings if they broke what one referred to as ‘Rob’s rules.’
Some said they believed the videotapes he shot of them having sex would be used against them if they exposed what was happening.
According to testimony, Kelly gave several accusers herpes without disclosing he had an STD, coerced a teenage boy to join him for sex with a naked girl who emerged from underneath a boxing ring in his garage, and shot a shaming video of one victim showing her smearing feces on her face as punishment for breaking his rules.
Harrowing story of how R. Kelly sexually abused Aaliyah, impregnated and married her- ACCUSER
A former R. Kelly backup dancer testified on Monday that she witnessed the disgraced singer perform a sexual act on the late R&B singer Aaliyah when she was underage.
The witness, who was identified as Angela, told the Brooklyn Federal Court that she had sexual intercourse with Kelly when she was a minor on multiple occasions in the early Nineties. Angela, who worked as a backup dancer for Kelly, said she saw him performing oral sex on Aaliyah during a tour in either 1992 or 1993, when the singer was just 12 or 13 years old.
Kelly has repeatedly denied accusations that he led a criminal enterprise that sexually exploited women, girls and even boys during a 30-year career. His lawyers have portrayed his accusers as groupies who are lying about their relationships with him.
Angela is the 10th accuser to testify against Kelly over the past three weeks. She said that she was either 14 or 15 years old when she first met Kelly in 1991 at a party, and the singer had sexual intercourse with her for the first time that night.
“He asked me to climb on top of him,” Angela said, adding that there were three other young women in various states of undress in the room with them. “I paused for a moment. I was a little startled.”
She claimed Kelly asked her to ‘straddle him and ride him.’ She said she did as she was told after putting a condom on Kelly. During the encounter, the singer also allegedly fondled the other young women who were present, according to Vulture.
Angela explained that she continued seeing Kelly every day for the next few years. She later dropped out of high school and began working as a backup dancer for him. According to the woman, she and other dancers were expected to have sex with Kelly.
“He told us we had to pay our dues. It was a requirement to be around,” she said.
The alleged sexual encounter between Kelly and Aaliyah that Angela said she witnessed supposedly took place on a tour bus. Angela said she and another young woman tried to play a prank on Kelly, and when Angela opened the door to Kelly’s bedroom on the bus, she said, “I saw Robert and Aaliyah in a sexual situation. It appeared that he had his head in between her legs and was giving her oral sex… I closed the door abruptly and pushed the girl behind me away from the door.”
Angela said she then abruptly shut the door and never spoke to Kelly about what she allegedly witnessed. Aaliyah was about 13 years old at the time of the alleged encounter.
Kelly and Aaliyah were illegally married in August 1994. At the time, Aaliyah was 15-years-old and Kelly was 27. Kelly’s former road manager Demetrius Smith testified that Kelly married Aaliyah to avoid jail time because he believed Aaliyah was pregnant with his baby, theGrio previously reported. Smith admitted to helping orchestrate the illegal union by bribing an Illinois government employee $500 for a fake ID. The ID listed Aaliyah’s age as 18, though a birth date was missing.
Aaliyah tragically died in August 2001 alongside eight others after a plane destined for Miami crashed less than a minute after take-off in the Bahamas.