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R. Kelly Refuses To Testify At His Trial

R. Kelly Refuses To Testify At His Trial

R&B singer, R. Kelly has refused to testify at his own sex trafficking trial.

Gatekeepers News reports that the music star who is born Robert Sylvester Kelly appears to be avoiding brutal cross-examination and told US District Judge Ann Connelly on Wednesday that he doesn’t want to testify.

‘You don’t want to testify, correct?’ the Judge asked the singer and he responded: ‘Yes, ma’am.’

When the judge asked him if he is aware of the implications of his decision, he replied: ‘correct.’ Earlier, Lawyers had hinted that Kelly might likely not testify.

A prosecutor, at the close the Wednesday’s argument, told jurors that the government had delivered on its promises to prove that the R&B singer had for years commanded close associates to help him target, groom and exploit girls, boys, and young women for his own sexual gratification.

Assistant US Attorney Elizabeth Geddes maintained that the trial ‘showed he did just that.’

According to her, Kelly got away with sexually abusing his victims by surrounding himself with a team that he strictly controlled. She described the assistants, drivers, bodyguards and others Kelly employed as a criminal enterprise that resulted in the federal racketeering charges brought against him.

‘The defendant set rules, lots of them, and he demanded complete obedience,’ she explained. That meant ‘for many years what happened in the defendant´s world stayed in the defendant´s world. But no longer.’

Meanwhile, the majority of the defence witnesses insisted that they never saw Kelly abuse anyone. One even stressed that Kelly was ‘chivalrous’ to his girlfriends, while another admitted he owed Kelly for his break in the music industry and wanted to see him win the case.

Music industry executive Julius Darrington, who was the defence’s fifth and final witness, said he spent 10- to 12-hours a day with Kelly ‘every day, almost,’ from 2016 until 2019, when Kelly was taken into custody.

Darrington, in his testimony that last for about 15 minutes on Wednesday, said he never saw women being locked in rooms, heard screaming or crying, or saw Kelly strike anyone, which other witnesses have said took place.

During the cross-examination, prosecutor Elizabeth Geddes tried to emphasize how Darrington was not monitoring Kelly around the clock.

“You have no knowledge of what the defendant did behind closed doors when you weren’t there, correct?” she asked. “Correct,” Darrington responded.

The first witness to testify was Kelly’s childhood friend and former Chicago police officer, Larry Hood who claimed that he never saw Kelly engaging with underage girls but then admitted that he was present when the musician met Aaliyah for the first time. Aaliyah Dana who was an actress and singer before her death was reportedly assaulted by the R&B singer when she was 15. Aaliyah died in a plane crash in 2001 when she was 21-year-old.

Gatekeepers News reports that the prosecutors have called 45 witnesses since the trial began in federal court in Brooklyn on August 18. They included several females and two male accusers to back up allegations that Kelly used a cadre of managers, bodyguards and assistants to systematically recruit potential victims at his shows, malls and fast-food restaurants where he hung out.

The accusers alleged that once they were in Kelly’s orbit, he groomed them for unwanted sex and psychological torment, mostly when they were teenagers, in episodes dating to the 1990s.

Although, Kelly has pleaded not guilty to racketeering charges. He’s also charged with multiple violations of the Mann Act, an interstate anti-sex trafficking law that makes it illegal to transport anyone across state lines ‘for any immoral purpose.’

The music star also faces other criminal charges in federal court in Chicago, and state charges in Illinois and Minnesota.

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