CHICAGO _ R&B superstar R. Kelly pleaded not guilty Monday to charges he sexually abused four women, including three of whom were underage at the time of the alleged assaults, over a span of a dozen years.
Kelly, clad in a bright orange jail uniform and clasping his hands behind his back, looked on as his attorney, Steven Greenberg, entered the plea on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.
Cook County Associate Judge Lawrence Flood, who has been on the bench since 2001 and assigned to the Leighton Criminal Court Building for more than a decade, was randomly appointed to oversee the high-profile case earlier Monday.
Also Monday, celebrity attorney Michael Avenatti, who earlier this month gave prosecutors a VHS purportedly depicting Kelly having sexual contact with a 14-year-old girl, told reporters he had turned over yet another videotape.
The alleged victim on the new tape is connected to the charges brought Friday against Kelly, Avenatti said, but he did not provide further details.
Kelly isn't scheduled to return to court on the charges until March 22.
Among the allegations laid out by prosecutors against Kelly: that he solicited an underage girl outside his 2008 criminal trial and later sexually abused her; carried on a yearlong sexual relationship with a girl he had met in 1998 when she was celebrating her 16th birthday; tried to force oral sex on his 24-year-old hairdresser in 2003; and videotaped himself having sex with a young girl at his home in Olympia Fields in the late 1990s.
Prosecutors allege Kelly sexually abused his hairdresser while he was free on bond on then-pending child pornography charges. In a sensational trial in 2008, six years after he was indicted, Kelly was acquitted of charges alleging he filmed himself having sex with his goddaughter, a girl estimated to have been as young as 13.
After his indictment Friday, Kelly surrendered to Chicago police shortly after 8 p.m. at the Central District police station at 18th and State streets, where he spent that night in lockup. On Saturday he was ordered held on $1 million but was unable to post 10 percent _ $100,000 _ over the weekend to win his release from Cook County Jail.
Kelly, who has been dogged for years by accusations of sexual misconduct of underage girls and women, was charged Friday in four separate indictments.
The singer, 52, whose legal name is Robert Kelly, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
Each of the 10 Class 2 felony counts carries a maximum of seven years in prison upon conviction but also could result in probation.
Friday's charges came in the wake of reporting in BuzzFeed and The New Yorker by Chicago-based journalist Jim DeRogatis and after damning allegations in a recent Lifetime documentary series.
Citing the "deeply, deeply disturbing" allegations raised in the documentary, State's Attorney Kim Foxx made an unusual public plea last month for any Kelly accusers to come forward.
Last week, Avenatti told reporters that earlier this month he gave Foxx a videotape he unearthed that depicted Kelly having sex with a 14-year-old girl. He said Friday that the VHS tape dating to about 1999 was more than 40 minutes long and showed Kelly on two separate days engaged in sexual acts with the girl. He said the audio was clear and the video of "far superior" quality than the grainy tape used at the 2008 trial.
Both the alleged victim and Kelly referred to the girl's age more than 10 separate times on the tape, according to Avenatti. She repeatedly called Kelly "Daddy" during the encounters, and at one point Kelly urinated on her, he said.
"This was in no way role-playing during some sexual act," Avenatti said. "It is clear that this young lady was 14 years of age."
Avenatti said he uncovered the tape in January as part of an extensive investigation into Kelly's past that began when an alleged victim came forward to him in April 2018.
Kelly's alleged victims were "among the most vulnerable in our society ... girls that came from very tough times and tough neighborhoods," Avenatti said.
The alleged abuse occurred years ago, but prosecutors still were able to bring charges against Kelly. Three of the indictments fall within the Illinois statute of limitations because charges were brought within 20 years of each of the alleged victims' 18th birthdays, according to court records.
Records show the fourth charge, involving the February 2003 incident, could have been prosecuted at any time since Kelly's DNA was entered into a database within 10 years of the alleged incident and the accuser reported the abuse within three years.
The indictments come at a time of intensifying professional trouble for Kelly, who has been targeted by a social media movement, #MuteRKelly, that called on streaming services and radio stations to drop his music and promoters not to book any more concerts. Protesters have demonstrated outside Kelly's Chicago studio, and a scheduled performance in Chicago last year was canceled amid the uproar.
Greenberg, Kelly's lawyer, said he believes the alleged victim in the first tape he handed over to prosecutors is the same girl from the 2008 child pornography trial and that charging the singer again for that amounts to double jeopardy.
The charges come about six weeks after Foxx called on any Kelly accusers to come forward, citing the allegations in the documentary series detailing accusations of sexual misconduct against the singer.
The six-hour documentary, "Surviving R. Kelly," aired on the Lifetime channel and alleged that he has manipulated young women into joining a "sex cult," forcing them to stay with him against their will and keeping them under his control.
In the days after Foxx's plea for help from alleged Kelly victims, her office was inundated with tips.
