A judge set bond at $1 million for R&B singer R. Kelly at a hearing in Chicago on Saturday. Kelly, 52, was arrested last night on 10 charges of aggravated criminal sex abuse of minors under 17. The judge specified no contact with women under 18 after he posts bond.
Cook County Judge John Fitzgerald Lyke Jr., who recently granted bond to disgraced actor Jussie Smollett, called the allegations against Kelly “disturbing.” He said the bail amounts to $250,000 for each of the four underaged victims.
Kelly was also ordered to surrender his passport as a condition of his bond. He is required to put up 10% of the $1 million bond ($100,000).
After the hearing, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx revealed new graphic details from the indictment.
Foxx said one underage victim attended Kelly’s trial in 2008, where he was acquitted of 13 counts of child porn. The girl asked Kelly for his autograph and he invited her to visit him at his Cook County home. Foxx said between May 1, 2009 and January 31, 2010, the victim willingly engaged in repeated sexual contact with the singer.
The victim said he slapped and choked her and ejaculated on her. She turned over her semen-stained t-shirt to the police. A DNA analysis determined Kelly deposited the semen on the shirt.
Kelly’s defense attorney Steve Greenberg said Kelly’s accusers are lying for fame and profit.
“I think all the women are lying, yes,” Greenberg said on Friday night. “This has become, ‘Hey, R Kelly – I can say R Kelly did something’ – boom. There was a press conference yesterday, ‘Oh, these two girls were assaulted by R Kelly!’ And the lawyer stood there with a picture of LL Cool J.”
It appears that the two R Kelly accusers who Gloria Allred represents has no proof that they actually met R Kelly. So Gloria needed a photo of the women with ANY Black man. And because the assumption is all Black ppl look alike, Gloria knew the media would run with it pic.twitter.com/NAarYzun7P
— Tariq Nasheed ?? (@tariqnasheed) February 23, 2019
The new charges come a month after Lifetime Television aired a documentary Surviving R Kelly detailing multiple allegations of abuse by women who were above the age of consent.
Two of the accusers who appeared in the documentary, Joycelyn Savage and Azriel Clary walked hand-in-hand into the Leighton Criminal Courthouse on Saturday to attend Kelly’s bond hearing.
Jocelyn Savage (left) & Azriel Clary walk into the Leighton Criminal Courthouse for R. Kelly's first court appearance following his arrest on charges he sexually abused four people, including three underage girls pic.twitter.com/K3agPaPCPv
— Gossipofthecity (@gossipoftheciti) February 23, 2019
Greenberg suspects that Illinois State Attorney Kim Foxx was pressured to bring charges against Kelly – for example to distract the media from disgraced actor Jussie Smollett’s troubles.
“I had a discussion with the state’s attorney’s office earlier this week [and] we were supposed to meet next week and have a discussion about what they had,” Greenberg said. “I was gonna be allowed to address what they had, then they just decided to indict him today for whatever reason. I suspect this is succumbing to public pressure.”
Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
