NEW YORK — R. Kelly forced his girlfriends to write letters as “collateral” denying that he abused them, a woman testified Wednesday.
The woman, who met Kelly in 2015 when she was 17, said that after his 2008 child pornography trial, his lawyer told him to have “every girlfriend write a letter” defending the singer.
“The defendant would have other girlfriends make me write these letters. He said they would go to his attorneys and they’d never see the light of day,” the woman said.
“[Were the letters] to protect him in a trial like this from very serious charges?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes.
“That is correct,” said the witness, who the Daily News is referring to as Jane.
Jane, the second accuser to testify at Kelly’s trial, has been on the stand since Monday, testifying about the physical, emotional and sexual abuse she says she suffered at the hands of Kelly. The R&B superstar was in his late 40s when he met Jane in Orlando, Florida.
The witness left Kelly in October 2019 after dating him for more than four years. She said she wrote countless letters at Kelly’s direction, including one in which she claimed she spanked herself, she testified.
“I decided I would spank myself really hard until I had bruises,” the letter reads.
The woman previously testified that Kelly often spanked her in punishments he called “chastisings.”
“Did you ever spank yourself?” Geddes asked after Jane read the letter out loud in court.
“Never,” she responded.
Kelly, 54, also forced her to write that while she wanted to have sex, the “I Believe I Can Fly” singer only wanted to be friends.
“If you don’t bring me back that d--k then I’m going to say you raped me. I’m going to say you raped me since I was a minor,” she wrote in the letter. ”I’ll tell everyone you hit me.”
Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, is on trial for allegedly running an enterprise that trafficked underage girls and young women from his concerts for illegal sex. He forced his victims to call him “daddy” and sometimes locked them in rooms for days at a time, prosecutors and accusers say.
“As insurance and a way to make sure these women wouldn’t talk, [Kelly] created and collected collateral. He made them create embarrassing videos and false letters,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Cruz Melendez during opening statements. “He kept it in his back pocket in case anyone tried to accuse him of anything.”
Kelly is also charged with knowingly giving herpes to some of his victims, as well as bribing a Chicago public assistance worker to make a fake ID for then-15-year-old singer Aaliyah so the two could be married.
The woman’s testimony revealed that her parents’ relationship with Kelly was complicated, as well.
Her parents tried to get the singer to sponsor bizarre business ideas, including a Bluetooth dildo that would play Kelly’s music while in use.
“They decided to bring dildos to his show,” the witness wrote in a letter to her brother about her parents.
After the concert, her parents went backstage to show the sex toys to Kelly.
“Mom pulled a dildo out in front of anybody and everybody,” she wrote. “I thought it was a ridiculous idea.”
Jane is expected to finish testifying in the afternoon.
