R. Kelly Allegedly Infected 17-Year-Old With Herpes
By
Victoria Bekiempis
Kelly in 2019. Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images
TW: This post contains graphic details of sexual assault.
After luring a 17-year-old into his orbit under the false pretense of nurturing her music career,
R. Kelly sexually assaulted her, made a point of degrading her during their encounters, and ultimately infected the girl with herpes, she alleged Monday in the singer’s
Brooklyn federal sex-crimes and racketeering trial. (She did not use her real name in court.)
“I was 17,” the woman said, bursting into tears shortly before she detailed her diagnosis.
The woman, now 23, said she met Kelly at a concert in Orlando, Florida, in April 2015. A member of his entourage had given her a wrist band, which got her closer to the stage.
“When he performed his second set, someone from his entourage did come to me and [gave] me a sheet of paper and said, ‘Don’t tell anyone.’ It said ‘Rob’ and had a number.” The then-teen wound up giving her mother the piece of paper. In the days following the show, she realized that she had the wrong phone number.
She went into her mom’s phone, and Kelly’s number was there. The two had exchanged texts. “My mother was acting as me,” the woman said, saying her mother had told Kelly about her music.
The alleged victim, who now had the right phone number, started communicating with Kelly directly. He invited her to a hotel outside Orlando “to audition.” She went to the hotel — with the knowledge of her parents — with instructions to meet Kelly in his van, which was parked outside the hotel. They were alone.
“He had asked me to sit on his lap. I asked him if he was sure. He said yes,” she recalled. “I did.”
Kelly asked for a kiss, she testified. She didn’t give him one; he urged her to give him just a little peck. About five minutes later, someone knocked on the door of the van and said it was time to go upstairs.
Kelly allegedly said that “before the audition, he needed to come.” She rebuffed his entreaties but wound up having to walk back and forth in her panties and a bra. Eventually, he engaged in some oral contact with her buttocks, she alleged.
“There was a knock on the door. He got up and he went to the door and he saw it was officers at the door,” the woman said. “He was very anxious and scared. After he looked through the peephole, he said, ‘Are you 18?’ I said, ‘Yes.’”
He told her to go to the bathroom and get dressed and not to leave the restroom. Kelly allegedly spoke to the officers, and she exited the restroom. They told her that her parents had been looking for her but couldn’t get in touch. “I had to call my parents in front of them and let them know I was okay.” She showed the officers her ID, which would have said she was 17 years old.
They left, handing Kelly a card, and told him “anytime he was in Orlando and needed security, to let them know.”
After that alleged encounter, the woman said their illicit sexual relationship progressed, with Kelly flying her across the country to places where he had concerts, paying for her accommodations, and engaging in still more unlawful behavior, including intercourse. (Her mother knew that she was traveling to his concerts.) He “made me crawl back and forth” during their encounters, the woman said. Kelly, who would ejaculate on her face, used that as a tool of shame, she alleged.
“There would be times when he would make me leave it on my face,” she said. Once, after doing that, “he told me not to wash it off and to let it harden.” He then called an associate into the room and “had an entire conversation with her.”
“I recall them laughing, and I felt very much humiliated,” she claimed.
Later in the summer of 2015, when she was in Chicago, she started to feel physically unwell.
“Every single time we would have vaginal penetration, I would have discomfort,” she said. “Initially, he would joke and say it’s just because he’s ‘too big size-wise.’”
“It got worse … it got to the point where I physically couldn’t even walk.”
Kelly had a female associate, identified in court as “Juice,” take her to a doctor.
“She said that I had contracted an STD — herpes,” she said of the doctor. “Vaginal herpes.”
She was prescribed medications and “Juice” took her to a pharmacy in Downtown Chicago to pick them up.
“I was devastated,” she said. “I had told him, and he was agitated and said, ‘You could have gotten that from anyone.’”
“I told him I had only been intimate with him,” she said, saying she thought that he had “purposely” given her herpes.
The prosecutor asked whether Kelly had ever disclosed a herpes diagnosis.
“He never did,” she recalled.
Whenever she would have an outbreak, “he would usually make, like, a joke.”
“Everybody has it, no big deal,’” she recalled him allegedly saying.
She continued to endure outbreaks.
“I think your p—y is broken,” she alleged Kelly saying.