Popular R&B singer R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison at a US Attorney’s Office for a sex- trafficking case in New York on Wednesday, June 29.
This is a follow-up to last year’s conviction when a jury found R&B singer and producer Kelly, 55, guilty of abusing women, girls, and boys, more than 20 years after first facing allegations, and other counts in a trial that was seen as racketeering.
US District Judge Ann Donnelly imposed the sentence at a federal court in Brooklyn after hearing statements from seven victims.
According to his victims, who expressed their past experiences in tears to the Jury on Wednesday, R-Kelly had preyed on them and misled them.
“You made me do things that broke my spirit. I literally wished I would die because of how low you made me feel,” one woman told the singer. She said she was forever traumatized by her teenage experience with him.
Another woman said Kelly’s conviction renewed her confidence in the legal system.
“I once lost hope,” she said, addressing the court and prosecutors, “but you restored my faith.”
The woman said Kelly victimized her after she went to a concert when she was 17.
“I was afraid, naive, and didn’t know how to handle the situation,” she said, so she did not speak up at the time.
“Silence,” she said, “is a very lonely place.”
Moreover, Prosecutors sought a minimum 25-year term, while the defense said a sentence of 10 years or less is all he deserved.
Kelly awaited sentencing on his federal sex trafficking conviction in a tan prison uniform.
Meanwhile, Kelly has been jailed without bail since 2019. He is still facing child pornography and obstruction of justice charges in Chicago, where a trial is scheduled to begin on 15 August.