CHICAGO — A mother whose young daughter was allegedly sexually assaulted by R. Kelly on videotape in the 1990s testified Monday that Kelly threatened them and sent them out of town after the allegations of abuse first surfaced more than 20 years ago.
The woman, who is using the pseudonym “Susan,” echoed some of the explosive claims her daughter “Jane” made in court last week, a watershed moment in the R. Kelly saga after years of denying any sexual misconduct by the R&B superstar.
But Susan’s testimony, unlike Jane’s, was disjointed and confusing at times, and she contradicted her daughter on a few key points. She was also visibly nervous, frowning and fidgeting on the stand, while Jane remained composed.
Susan testified that she and her husband met with Kelly and his business manager, Derrel McDavid, at a hotel in Oak Park to discuss reports that Kelly was having sex with Jane, who was 14 at the time.
Susan said Kelly “never admitted” directly having sexual relations with Jane at the meeting, “But he was just saying he was sorry and he was crying.”
“I was bawling and crying,” Susan said, adding that Kelly and McDavid said that the family “needed to leave town right away.”
Kelly also made what Susan interpreted as a threat to the family’s safety: “Are you with us or are you not?”
“They were going to harm us if we didn’t do what they told us to do,” Susan said. “We were fearful ... we packed our bags, and we left town.”
The testimony came as the second week of Kelly’s federal child pornography trial got underway at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago, where Kelly, McDavid and another former associate, Milton “June” Brown, are accused of conspiring to pay off victims and witnesses and collect videotapes Kelly allegedly made of himself sexually abusing underage girls.
Susan’s testimony was seen as an important piece to the prosecution’s allegations of a conspiracy to silence her family, and lawyers for both Kelly and McDavid sought to discredit her on cross-examination, calling into question her motives and memory.
Susan said that after the Oak Park meeting, her family took a lengthy trip to the Bahamas and Mexico that was paid for by Kelly. When they returned, they were subpoenaed to testify before a Cook County grand jury investigating a videotape. Susan said she lied when she claimed it was not her daughter on the tape.
When a prosecutor asked who was really depicted in the video shown to her at the grand jury proceedings, Susan replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “My daughter and R. Kelly.”
She lied at the grand jury because “we feared for our lives and we were intimidated,” she said. Across the room, Kelly shook his head, then hung his head toward the table in apparent exasperation.
Susan and her husband also went along with Kelly’s request because Jane “had threatened she was going to harm herself, run away and not talk to us again,” she said.
Susan and Jane’s accounts of the Oak Park hotel meeting differed on key points. Susan said she did not remember if Jane was there but testified that McDavid was present; Jane said last week that she was there, but she could not remember if McDavid was in attendance.
In Jane’s telling, Kelly told her father at the meeting that “it was true” there was a tape of him with Jane. In Susan’s accounting, Kelly did not specifically admit to any wrongdoing.
And while Jane testified that Kelly sent them out of town specifically so the family could avoid questions from reporters as well as law enforcement, Susan said it was just to avoid an onslaught of media attention.
On cross-examination from McDavid’s attorney, Beau Brindley, Susan testified she was not aware of getting any money from Kelly or his team that was a payoff for keeping quiet; however, her late husband was in charge of the family finances, she said.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, frequently attacked Susan’s sometimes disjointed memory of events. She also repeatedly asked why, if Kelly was such a threat, Susan and her family continued to have a relationship with him for years after the allegations came to light.
Bonjean also confronted Susan with a report of an interview with federal prosecutors in 2019 where she said she didn’t remember anyone specifically instructing her how to testify.
“Mr. Kelly never told you what to say to the police or the grand jury, right?” Bonjean asked. Susan replied, “Yes, he did.”
“Did you lie to the U.S. attorneys on May 25, 2019, or are you lying now? Which one is it?” Bonjean asked.
“I’m telling the truth,” Susan replied.
Susan began her testimony by telling the jury she met Kelly in the late 1990s through her sister, Stephanie, at a concert at Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park, where Susan’s daughter was performing. She also knew of him before that, saying “he was a recording artist. A Grammy Award winner.”
Susan said her daughter started going to Kelly’s studio more and more to “work on music.” It was then that Stephanie arranged for Kelly to be Jane’s “godfather.” Asked how she felt about that arrangement, Susan replied, “Kinda strange. Because my sister told her to ask him that.”
Susan said her daughter would go to Kelly’s house and hang out with him and his family.
“She would spend time with them. She was going there a lot. We would drop her off.” Asked what they did, she said, “Movies, shopping, or just hanging out with the kids.”
Earlier Monday, an IRS agent spent nearly three hours walking jurors through a network of payments made by the R&B superstar’s various companies as part of the alleged scheme to cover up the sexual abuse of minors.
Special Agent Jason Scharer of the IRS walked jurors through a series of documents, including records of payments from Kelly or Kelly-related entities to “Jane” and her parents.
From roughly 2006 to 2012, Jane’s parents were paid more than $79,000 from Kelly-connected entities, including reimbursements for travel and hotels, health club memberships, and a property tax bill. Jane’s father worked as a musician for Kelly at the time, but none of the payments were classified as payroll expenses, the agent testified.
Jane herself also received payments from 2008 to 2015, including a dozen checks for $1,100 or $1,150 over the course of a single year, most of which were labeled “settlement,” Scharer said. Jurors have already heard that there was no formal settlement agreement between Kelly and Jane.
Scharer also took jurors through travel records showing that Kelly’s businesses paid to send Jane and her parents to Mexico and the Bahamas in 2002.
Other records detailed hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments that Kelly and his companies allegedly made in 2007 to two men to help recover other incriminating tapes. Jurors are expected to hear from both of those men later in the trial.
Scharer also testified about records related to a lawsuit co-defendant McDavid filed against the singer in 2014. McDavid alleged in that suit that Kelly did not pay out settlement money McDavid was owed after the two former business associates parted ways.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of production of child pornography, conspiracy to produce child pornography and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Some of the counts carry a mandatory minimum of 10 years behind bars if convicted, while others have ranges of five to 20 years in prison. Prosecutors are also seeking a personal money forfeiture of $1.5 million from Kelly.
The trial is expected to last at least through mid-September, and jurors are likely to hear from more women who say Kelly had sexual contact with them when they were minors. Prosecutors also allege Kelly and his team took extensive measures to conceal Kelly’s misdeeds, ultimately leading to his acquittal on state child-pornography charges in 2008.
Jurors on Friday watched graphic clips of three separate videos allegedly showing the R&B superstar sexually assaulting 14-year-old Jane.
Jane testified last week that she was the girl seen on the videos and that Kelly had sex with her “innumerable times” when she was underage, then paid her and her family to keep quiet.
Kelly’s defense so far has not directly contested that it is Kelly on the video clips, only saying that their authenticity could not be verified and that Kelly was previously acquitted for conduct related to them. Nor has the defense given jurors an alternate version of Jane’s narrative of events related to videos. Instead, the defense lawyers are seeking to sow doubt by telling the panel Jane denied it was her on the clips for more than two decades.
Regardless of the outcome, Kelly is still facing decades in prison. In June, he was sentenced to 30 years on federal racketeering charges brought in New York. He is appealing both the jury’s verdict and the sentence in that case.
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