At this point, I’m about ready to start trolling hoteps and by posting Harvey Weinstein articles on their social media pages with the caption, “But... but... but where’s R Kelly’s 23-year sentence at?”
That would be the least that the disgraced R&B king (if R&B stood for “rapes and bribes”) deserves as charges of sexual abuse continue to stack up against him.
According to CNN, five counts of racketeering and four more counts of violating the Mann Act—which makes it a felony to transport women (and, in Kelly’s case, young girls) across state lines for illegal sexual activity—were included in a superseding indictment filed by the US District Court in New York on Friday.(Not so fun fact: the Mann Act, passed June 25, 1910, was formerly known as the “White-Slave Traffic Act.” Don’t ask—just know it wasn’t originally intended to protect black girls.)
The new indictment replaces a five-count indictment handed down by the New York district last August adding nine new charges. Kelly pleaded not guilty to those charges as he has in the other jurisdictions where he’s charged with sex crimes including the US District of Illinois where he was hit with a 13-count superseding indictment last month with charges ranging from sexual abuse to child pornography, according to CNN.
Douglas Anton, Kelly’s attorney, issued a statement that can only be described as “right out of the rape-apologist playbook” as he blasts alleged victims as liars for suddenly remembering new details about their alleged assaults.
“How does an alleged victim ‘forget’ such things?” Anton wrote, displaying his abject ignorance on how trauma works. “Or... perhaps... these alleged victims are not victims at all, but only women who have been told and instructed, even peer pressured if you will, years later, that the claimed relationship they freely and voluntarily engaged in, should now, in the #metoo era, be classified as ‘bad’ or ‘abusive,’ and they are continually seeking to add facts, even if not truthful, to their story, to make the alleged events as salacious as humanly possible.”
So he mentions how long ago the abuse allegedly happened, claims all sexual contact was consensual and invokes #MeToo in a condescending way; if anybody happened to be playing victim-blame Bingo, you should probably be checking your scorecards right about now.
Just in case haven’t shouted “bingo” yet, Anton also added, “I bet they just want a book deal” to his diatribe saying the alleged victims should “hire a literary agent instead and put out your book of fiction, in which you can claim anything you want, subject only to the laws against defamation.”
Anton also repeatedly refers to all the alleged victims included in the indictment as “women,” conveniently ignoring the fact that three out of the six of them are minors.
From CNN:
The indictment accuses Kelly of allegedly having unprotected sex with two of the alleged victims without telling them he has herpes, referring to the victims as Jane Doe #5 and Jane Doe #6.
The four new alleged violations of the Mann Act, which prohibits sexual trafficking across state lines, include three charges involving Jane Doe #6. A fourth charge, according to the indictment, alleges that Jane Doe #5 was a minor at the time and was forced to “engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing one or more visual depictions of such conduct.”
Kelly is trash that is long overdue for being thrown away, and his attorney is apparently the same.