As R. Kelly’s sex trafficking trial in New York continues, the updates that make their way to the public have become increasingly sinister and disturbing. From claims that he forced one of his alleged accusers to get an abortion to accounts of being trapped in one room of his home, the testimonies in this ongoing trial have been hard to stomach. Now, a new update has come from New York, as an anonymous accuser has testified that R. Kelly forced his victims to write fake blackmail letters just in case they ever tried to take him to trial for sexual abuse.
According to Fox News, the disgraced singer‘s tactics could have possibly gone unchecked, because R. Kelly’s defense used the letters when confronting the previously mentioned witness. Upon the defense brandishing those letters, however, the unidentified accuser claims that this was all a part of R. Kelly’s plan.
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It is reported that the witness, testifying as a “Jane Doe” in federal court in Brooklyn, was instructed to read excerpts from one of the letters for the jury, and during that section, she threatened Kelly that if he tried to break up with her, “I’m going to tell everyone you raped me. … I’m going to say you raped me since I was a minor.” According to Fox News, there were reportedly also excerpts in which she threatened to “spank herself really hard” so that she would have bruises when accusing him of beating her.
After the defense attempted to discredit her testimony with the hand-written letters, the anonymous witness testified that R. Kelly forced her and the rest of his victims to write fake blackmail letters as a ploy to “protect him in a trial like this from very serious charges.” According to Fox News, the woman is now 23 years old, and during her testimony, she claims to have been groomed and exploited by Kelly since 2015, when she was a 17-year-old aspiring singer.
Stay tuned for more updates in R. Kelly’s sex trafficking trial in New York.
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