On Tuesday, day 16 of the federal sex trafficking trial against disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly, a Brooklyn judge granted prosecutors the ability to provide additional audio and video evidence that allegedly shows Kelly verbally and physically assaulting multiple accusers.
Per USA Today, the prosecutorial team provided a letter supporting the motion that would allow jurors to hear two videos from 2008 in which Kelly can be heard berating, threatening and inflicting violence on two different women.
“The recorded excerpts show (1) the type of physical and psychological abuse the defendant employed to exert and maintain control over women and girls with whom he was engaged in sexual relationships; and (2) his regular use of audio and video recordings to maintain control of females and protect the charged (criminal) enterprise,” the filing explains.
In one video excerpt, Kelly can be heard angrily accusing an unidentified woman of lying and threatening consequences before he eventually begins to assault her. “ If you lie to me, I’m going to fuck you up,” he says.
In the second, the irate entertainer accuses another woman, identified as “Jane Doe No. 20” in court documents, of stealing a Rolex watch from him. “You better not ever...take from me again or I will be in Florida and something will happen to you. You understand what I’m telling you?,” Kelly says.
ABC News adds that prosecutors were originally planning to have the second woman take the stand as a witness but changed course after she “started to have panic attacks and appeared to have an emotional breakdown” while listening to those tapes in preparation for her testimony. The filing also noted that Kelly previously bragged about having “cameras everywhere” across his Chicago studio and multiple locations.
R. Kelly is currently charged with 22 federal counts across New York, Illinois and Minnesota including charges of sex crimes, human trafficking, child pornography, racketeering, obstruction of justice, kidnapping and forced labor. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.