Jury Found R Kelly Guilty Of Racketeering n Sex Trafficking Scheme

The panel of seven men and five women had begun deliberating the charges on Friday afternoon after prosecutors and defence attorneys finished their closing arguments at the end

of a gruelling six-week trial in Brooklyn, New York, that often presented shocking testimony detailing Kelly’s abuse of women, girls, and boys.

According to report, jury has found the R&B superstar R Kelly guilty of being the ringleader of a decades-long racketeering and sex trafficking scheme that preyed upon Black women and children.

The disgraced singer was found guilty on all nine counts on Monday afternoon after decades of avoiding criminal responsibility for numerous allegations of misconduct, in a major #MeToo victory for Black women and girls.

He remained motionless; eyes downcast as the verdict was read.

The 54-year-old singer, who was born Robert Sylvester Kelly, was accused of running a Chicago-based criminal enterprise that recruited women and children and subjected them to unwanted sex and mental torment. Multiple witnesses said Kelly had forced them to obey perverse and brutal whims when they were underage in a scheme that stretched back more than two decades.

Gloria Allred, a lawyer for some of Kelly’s victims, said that of all the predators she’s gone after – a list including Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein – “Mr Kelly is the worst”.

“R Kelly thought that he could get away with all of this, but he didn’t,” Allred said outside the courthouse. “Despite the fact that he thought he could control all this, he was wrong.”

“He believed he could lie, but the truth finally caught up with him. It shouldn’t have taken this many women, and this many years, for Black women to be believed – and valued. Now time for soul searching,” wrote the scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw.

“R Kelly survivors have endured so much and this verdict won’t end the pain but it does matter,” tweeted former the New York City mayoral candidate Maya Wiley.