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Artist News Legal
R Kelly accuser returns to the stand in day two of his sex abuse trial
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 20 August 2021
Jurors in the ongoing R Kelly sex abuse trial heard further testimony yesterday from one of the musician’s main accusers. Among other things, she described how the musician made her dress like a girl scout during sex and once forbid her from the using the bathroom for three days.
Kelly, of course, faces a stack of charges in multiple US states relating to allegations of sexual abuse, including against minors, and other alleged crimes, all of which he denies. The current trial centres on charges that were filed in New York state, and as the case goes through the motions jurors will hear from a number of women who accuse the star of sexual and physical abuse.
One of those alleged victims is Jerhonda Pace, the first witness to take to the stand when the trial began on Wednesday, and who continued her testimony yesterday. Her first sexual encounter with Kelly took place in Chicago in 2009 when she was sixteen and he was 42. The age of consent in Chicago is seventeen.
On Wednesday, Pace admitted that when she first met Kelly she had lied about her age, but – she added – she had confirmed that she was, in fact, just sixteen prior to having sexual intercourse with the star. On finding out her real age, she alleged, Kelly told her to continue telling people she was nineteen, while acting as if she was 21.
Pace also told the court during the first part of her testimony that she continued to see Kelly for six months after that first proper encounter, but that he became increasingly controlling and abusive as time went by. Yesterday she provided more detail regarding that control and abuse.
Kelly sought to control many elements of Pace’s life during those six months, including when she could use the bathroom. Whether or not Kelly would allow bathroom use, she added, depended on whether or not she was “on his good side”. If she was “on his bad side”, permission could be denied for hours or even days. And one time she was not allowed to use the bathroom for three days.
Kelly also routinely videoed his sexual encounters with Pace. And, during those encounters, he sometimes demanded that Pace dress like a girl scout and wear her hair in pigtails, she added.
The musician could also be violent when he felt that his rules were being broken. On Wednesday, Pace described one particularly violent incident in which Kelly slapped and chocked her until she passed out. When she came round, he then spat at Pace and forced her to perform oral sex.
Yesterday Pace read an entry from her personal diary written on the day that incident occurred. “He spit in my face and in my mouth and choked me during an argument”, she recalled. He then slapped her three times and threatened “if I lied to him again, it’s not going to be an open hand next time”.
In their opening statements on Wednesday, Kelly’s defence team set out one of their key arguments for the entire case, which is that all of the musician’s accusers are ‘groupies’ or super-fans who knew what they were getting into when they pursued a relationship with the star.
And that strategy was employed when defence lawyer Deveraux Cannick began his first cross-examination of the case yesterday.
He accused Pace of initially stalking Kelly – and then lying about her age – in order to strike up a relationship with the star. Pace, of course, had already admitted to initially telling Kelly she was nineteen, but insists that she had revealed her actual age before the relationship turned sexual.
Elsewhere in Cannick’s probing, he talked Pace through her first visit to Kelly’s home. She confirmed that she complied when, on that visit, Kelly requested that she remove her clothes. Why didn’t she just refuse and leave at that point, Cannick wanted to know.
The defence lawyer also sought to throw doubt on Pace’s testimony by picking holes in the timeline that she had described. Although Pace’s first proper encounter with Kelly was in 2009, she had actually met him a year earlier when attending the star’s previous trial over allegations of sexual abuse against a minor.
Pace had said she was fourteen when attending those 2008 court hearings, but sixteen when she first went to Kelly’s home just over a year later. That timeline didn’t work, Cannick argued. Except that Pace had first met Kelly just before her fifteenth birthday and then again not long after her sixteenth birthday, so actually there we no issues at all with that element of her testimony.
After Pace, the court heard further testimonies from a police officer and a medic. The latter had been Kelly’s doctor for 25 years and discussed his history of sexually transmitted infections, mainly to confirm the allegation that Kelly had unprotected sex with women despite knowing he had genital herpes.
The trial continues.
