Two days after R. Kelly secretly married Aaliyah in 1994, the singer sexually assaulted a 17-year-old in his dressing room after a concert in Miami, the now 43-year-old testified in Brooklyn federal court on Monday.
“I was in complete shock. I was just very introverted and shy and I didn’t know what to say at all,” the woman, identified at the sex-crime trial against the singer by her first name Addie, told jurors on Monday, noting she only met Kelly once during his Sept. 1994 concert in Miami. “I just went blank.”
The woman told jurors that the assault occurred in a dressing room right after Kelly performed at the “Super Fest” concert at the American Airlines Arena in Miami, a show that also featured rap duo Salt N Pepper.
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“The main reason” Addie and her friend had her mother score all access tickets to the show, she testified, was to see the “Princess of R&B” Aaliyah headline the Sep. 2, 1994 event.
Unbeknownst to Addie, however, the 15-year-old singer just days prior married Kelly in a Chicago hotel suite after a fake ID was obtained for her, prosecutors say.
“Unfortunately, she did not perform,” Addie added.
After the concert, Addie said, two men approached her and her 19-year-old friend to take her backstage to meet Kelly—where they received an autograph in front of members of the press. The room was soon cleared out, leaving only the teenagers and the singer in the room.
Alone, the singer asked the teenagers to play a game with him about “who could kiss better,” Addie testified. During the game, where Addie said the teens both kissed the singer, she said that Kelly moved her toward the back of the dressing room and unzipped her pants before “having sexual intercourse with me.”
“I was in front of the counter and he was behind me,” she said, adding that Kelly “had sex with me unprotected.”
She said that her 19-year-old best friend was in the room during the assault—and that Kelly even tried to grab “her hands to make her participate but she refused.”
Once Kelly was done, Addie said, she and her friend “ran to the door, unlocked the door, and ran out of there.”
She admitted that though her friend wanted her to press charges, she did not feel comfortable “talking about the situation”—adding that as an aspiring dancer and actor at the time, she did not want to be “blacklisted from the industry.”
“I did not want to be victim shamed,” Addie added.
Addie is the fourth accuser to speak out in court against Kelly as part of the federal case. So far, all the victims who testified against Kelly have stated they were under the age of 18 when they met the R&B singer—and that during their relationship they were subjected to emotional abuse and a bizarre set of rules.
Kelly, 54, faces charges including racketeering based on kidnapping, sexual exploitation of children, and forced labor. He is also charged with violations of the Mann Act, which prohibits the transport of people across state lines for sex, and for allegedly obtaining a fake ID for Aaliyah in order to marry her.
In Feb. 1996, Aaliyah’s marriage to Kelly was annulled by her parents.
While Addie’s allegations are not a part of the charges against Kelly, Brooklyn prosecutors have argued the disgraced singer abused at least six women and girls, four of whom were minors when he first had sexual contact with them. The Grammy-winning singer has denied the allegations and his defense team have argued that their client’s accusers are simply disgruntled women with “an agenda.”
During cross examination, defense attorney Deveraux Cannick grilled Addie about her one-time encounter with Kelly—and on her decision to keep the 1994 program that Kelly had autographed. The program, which was shown in court, also had Kelly’s room number written on it after Addie said that the singer invited her to come over for her to audition.
“Someone raped you, according to you, and you kept the program as memorabilia,” Cannick asked.
“It was in a box,” she added, later stating that she never told anyone because “I didn’t want more victim shaming and more trauma at that time.”
“I am an adult now, I’m not a little girl,” she added after Cannick grilled her on her decision to speak out now about the assault over 25 years later.
Last Thursday, a woman identified as “Stephanie” testified that she had a six-month relationship with Kelly in the summer of 1999—when she was 17. During the relationship, she said, she was often forced to have sex with the singer on camera and was not allowed to speak to men in his presence. She said that during one dinner with Kelly and the hip hop duo Boo & Gotti, the singer called himself “genius” and compared himself to Jerry Lee Lewis, who controversially married his teenage cousin in the 1950s.
"He mentioned that he likes very young girls and that people make such a big deal of it. Even look at Jerry Lee Lewis, he is a genius and I am a genius,” Stephanie said.
Also last week, a woman identified as “Jane” testified about a harrowing five-year relationship with Kelly that began when she was 17. She said that during the relationship that began in 2015, she was kept in a room for three days after buying the wrong sized Hollister sweatpants and beaten with a size 12 Air Force 1 shoe for lying to the singer. In 2017, she said, the singer also forced her to have an abortion in an effort to “keep her body tight.”
Jerhonda Pace, 28, testified earlier in the trial that she was sexually and physically abused by Kelly when she was 16 years old. She said she ended her six-month relationship with Kelly in Jan. 2010 after he violently slapped her after calling her a “silly bitch” for lying.
Pace also told jurors that Kelly also gave her herpes and never told her he had a sexually transmitted disease—an allegation echoed by Jane.
