R. Kelly Arrested on Federal Sex Trafficking Charges
R. Kelly was arrested Thursday evening on federal sex crime charges, NBC New York reports. According to two law enforcement officials, the singer was apprehended in Chicago and is expected to be brought to New York. NYPD detectives and Homeland Security investigator agents arrested Kelly Thursday night at 7 p.m. local time on sex trafficking charges while he was walking his dog.
The new indictment by the Northern District of Illinois contains 13 charges, including sex crimes, child pornography, enticement of a minor and obstruction of justice, per Chicago Sun-Times. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn also filed a separate indictment against Kelly with five additional charges, the New York Times reported, including one count of racketeering and four counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting people over state lines for the purpose of prostitution. A rep for the U.S. Attorney’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Kelly’s former manager Derrel McDavid and former employee Milton “June” Brown were also charged in connection to the Chicago indictment, which claims that the singer and both men spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to recover missing videotapes from the singer’s “collection” that allegedly showed Kelly having sex with underage girls. Kelly is also accused of tampering with the witnesses connected to his initial child pornography trial, including pressuring the father of the girl – who was Kelly’s then-14-year-old goddaughter – allegedly seen in the videotape to misidentify his own daughter to a grand jury.
The Brooklyn indictment alleges that Kelly “preyed upon women and girls who attended his concerts so that the victims could be available to engage in illegal sexual activity with him at a moment’s notice.” The charges revolve around five female victims, three of whom were underage at the time of the events outlined in the indictment. The racketeering count accuses Kelly of being the ringleader of an enterprise that included the singer’s employees, bodyguards, drivers and more that helped Kelly recruit the women at concerts. According to the New York Times, one of the alleged victims in the indictment is Faith Rodgers, who featured in Surviving R. Kelly and also sued the singer for giving her a sexually transmitted disease.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/r-kelly-arrested-federal-sex-trafficking-charges-858154/
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