|
 Attorney Deveraux Cannick asked
the woman, known on the witness stand as Jane,
to read letters in which she said her parents
had suggested she lie to Kelly about her age,
and that they tried to benefit financially from
her relationship with him.
In an undated letter to her brother, Jane said
her mother would "nag" her to take photos and
videos of her and Kelly so she could blackmail
him, and pushed her to dress provocatively for
the singer.
Now 23, Jane told prosecutors that Kelly, 54,
coerced her and other young women to write the
letters in order to protect him from possible
legal troubles.
"The defendant would tell us exactly what to
say," Jane testified on her third day in the
witness stand at Kelly's sex abuse trial in
federal court in Brooklyn.
Kelly, known for the Grammy-winning song "I
Believe I Can Fly," has pleaded not guilty to
charges that he ran a decades-long racketeering
scheme in which he abused six women and girls,
including Jane and the late singer Aaliyah.
A few of Kelly's fans gathered outside the
courthouse on Wednesday to show support and
signs reading "Free R Kelly" were scribbled in
bright colored chalk on the pavement nearby.
Jane has said she met Kelly at a Florida music
festival, later lived with him until the summer
of 2019, and left him for good that October.
[to top of second column]
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 She said that during their
first meeting, Kelly pressured her into having
oral sex before granting her a singing audition.
Jane said she began regularly meeting with Kelly
and having sex with him in different cities.
She testified that her parents eventually agreed
to put her under the care of a woman Kelly knew
so Jane could live with the singer in Chicago
while attending high school virtually.
Later on Wednesday, Malak Benabdallah, a former
high school friend of Jane, testified that Jane
told her in text messages exchanged in 2015 that
she had sexual intercourse with Kelly and that
she believed she was pregnant. Prosecutors
showed text messages between the two teenagers
at the time, one containing baby bottle emojis.
Kelly also faces sex-related criminal charges in
Illinois and Minnesota. Many accusations of
sex-related misconduct were discussed in the
2019 Lifetime documentary "Surviving R. Kelly."
(Reporting by Maria Caspani; Editing by Noeleen
Walder, Jonathan Oatis and Karishma Singh)
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