R. Kelly’s sex trafficking trial continued in Brooklyn as the first witness called in the case reportedly testified that the famed R&B singer made her “dress like a girl scout” when she was 16 during sex.
“He [Kelly] wanted me to put my hair up in pigtails and dress like a Girl Scout,” 28-year-old Jerhonda Pace shared on the stand in federal court, the New York Post reported Thursday. (RELATED: Fans Don’t React To R. Kelly’s Boycott Over Sexual Abuse Allegations The Way You’d Expect)
R. Kelly’s long-delayed trial opens today. He’s accused of running a criminal enterprise that recruited underage girls for sex. Prosecutors will offer decades of evidence, including allegations over his marriage to the singer Aaliyah when she was just 15. https://t.co/9tP1UYqPIk
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 18, 2021
Pace reportedly said she met the performer, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, in Chicago when she was 14. She testified about the alleged sexual encounter she had with him more than a year later and how he reportedly set up a tripod and shot video of the whole thing, according to the New York Post. She claimed he was 42 at the time. (RELATED: R. Kelly Indicted On Racketeering And Sexual Exploitation Of Children)
Her testimony came on the second day of Kelly’s trial where he faces nine counts of racketeering and violations of the federal Mann Act also known as “the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910,” according to Cornell Law School. (RELATED: Superstar Rapper Says He Failed Alleged R. Kelly Survivors: ‘We Failed Our Communities As Black People’)
Pace testified Wednesday that the singer performed oral sex on the then-teen, claiming that she told him she “felt it wasn’t right” and that she was only 16, even allegedly presenting him with her ID, the New York Post reported. She reportedly testified that he said he would “train her” and brushed it off.
“He bent me over the back of his sofa and he took my virginity,” Pace claimed, as she explained in the morning she was allegedly given $50 dollars and driven to a train station by an employee.
Pace alleged that she returned to Kelly’s mansion several times over the next six months and was forced to follow “the rules” which included reportedly having to refer to him as “Daddy,” according to the New York Post.
Kelly’s attorney Deveraux Cannick attempted to discredit Pace’s account and age but appeared to mess up the calculations, the outlet reported. Cannick noted how she said on April 1, 2008, when she met Kelly, that she was 14 and then during the alleged assault in May 2009 was 16.
“So you advanced two years in one year, in one month?” Cannick asked. “That’s correct,” Pace answered, whose birthday is April 19.
The 54-year-old singer was arrested in Chicago in the summer of 2019. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have alleged that he’s abused more than a dozen women, girls and boys for more than two decades between 1994-2019, Insider.com noted.
If convicted, he faces 10 years behind bars.