Update: Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx officially announced the charges against Kelly in a press conference on Friday afternoon, and confirmed that Kelly is facing ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four victims. She also said that each charge has a sentencing range of three to seven years, meaning that, if convicted on all ten charges, Kelly could be facing up to 70 years in prison.
Watch Foxx’s press conference below.
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Over the past week or so, multiple new tapes of R. Kelly having sex with underaged girls have reportedly been discovered. It was believed these tapes could lead to charges against the controversial singer, and now it appears they have: The Chicago Sun Times reports that on Friday morning, Kelly was charged with ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in Cook County.
Records indicate that his first court date related to the charges is set for March 8. Early Friday afternoon, Kelly’s attorney, Steven Greenberg, said he had not been notified that Kelly had been charged.
Lawyer Michael Avenatti revealed last week that “new critical video evidence establishing his guilt” had been found and said that it was a new “VHS videotape of Mr. Kelly engaging in multiple sexual assaults of a girl underage.” Then, a few days later, another similar tape was reportedly discovered. The recent tapes are the first ones to surface since 2008, when the singer was acquitted on child porn charges for a similar tape, in which he allegedly urinated on a teenage girl.
This comes after Kelly faced two new accusations of sexual abuse yesterday, when a Chicago grand jury heard testimonies from two women who say Kelly had sex with minors. One of them even turned over physical evidence. One alleged victim reportedly testified that she had sex with Kelly in Illinois between 2008 and 2010, when she was underage.
