NEW YORK — R&B singer R. Kelly raped a 17-year-old girl backstage after a 1994 concert in Miami the sole time he met her, the woman testified Monday.
The now 44-year-old woman, who goes by Addie, was given VIP tickets to a Sept. 2, 1994, R. Kelly concert, hoping to see Aaliyah. But instead she was assaulted by then 27-year-old Kelly in his dressing room in front of her best friend after he autographed her ticket, she claims.
Aaliyah, who might have been pregnant at the time and had just married Kelly days earlier in an illegal wedding, did not perform.
“I just basically went blank,” Addie said of the alleged unprotected forced sex. “I was in complete shock.”
Addie is the fourth woman to testify at his trial in Brooklyn federal court. The singer faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted of running a decadeslong scheme that targeted underage girls and young women — sometimes at his shows — for illegal sex.
He is accused of torturing some of the girls by forcing them to remain in rooms sometimes for days at a time, making them film humiliating videos and delivering spankings as punishments for breaking his rules.
The alleged sexual assault of Addie occurred after two members of Kelly’s entourage picked the victim and her friend out of the crowd when the concert ended and asked if they would like to go backstage and get autographs from the “Sex Me” singer, Addie testified.
They went back into Kelly’s dressing room, where he was being interviewed by members of the press, she said.
He signed her ticket and when she told him she was only 17, he requested the reporters leave the dressing room but she and her friend were allowed to stay, she said.
Kelly put on a new song of his for Addie and her friend, she testified.
“I want to know which one of you kiss better,” he said to them, according to Addie.
He briefly kissed her friend then began kissing Addie, she testified.
“I felt a little overwhelmed,” she said. “Initially shocked.”
Then he began getting more aggressive, pushing her toward the back of the room, unzipping her pants and beginning to force himself on her, she said.
When he tried to get Addie’s friend to participate, the 19-year-old refused.
After Kelly finished raping her the girls left the room and Addie’s friend tried to get her to call the police — but Addie refused, she said.
“I didn’t want to get victim shamed,” she said.
On cross-examination, Kelly’s lawyer Deveraux Cannick asked why Addie did not come forward with the experience until 2019, when she told the feds about the alleged sexual assault.
“There came a time that the victim shaming didn’t bother you anymore?” Cannick asked.
“I’m an adult now,” she responded. “I’m no longer a little girl.”
