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{"id":955,"date":"2021-08-27T00:49:14","date_gmt":"2021-08-27T00:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yeswecantv.com\/?p=955"},"modified":"2021-08-27T00:49:14","modified_gmt":"2021-08-27T00:49:14","slug":"r-kelly-considered-self-genius-who-could-act-with-impunity-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yeswecantv.com\/2021\/08\/27\/r-kelly-considered-self-genius-who-could-act-with-impunity-2\/","title":{"rendered":"R. Kelly considered self ‘genius’ who could act with impunity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
One of R. Kelly’s alleged abusers recounted in testimony Thursday that the singer said “genius” artists could behave as they pleased and compared himself to Jerry Lee Lewis, who married a child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stephanie, who said she was 17 during her six-month relationship in 1999 with Kelly, recalled a conversation with the R&B artist and two others when he said he preferred “young girls” and questioned why “people make such a big deal of it.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Look at Jerry Lee Lewis,” she quoted Kelly as saying, referring to the influential rock and roll pioneer who controversially married his 13-year-old second cousin in the 1950s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He’s a genius and I’m a genius. We should be able to do whatever we want,” Kelly is alleged to have said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Look at what we give the world.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stephanie, now 39, is the third accuser to take the stand against Kelly, who’s on trial in Brooklyn federal court for racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, bribery and forced labor between 1994 and 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stephanie first met Kelly at a McDonald’s in Chicago, where one of his associates gave her his number on a slip of paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She threw it away and didn’t see him until a year later, when he was holding a promotional event at a Nike store near where she worked. She approached him hoping he could help her friend, an aspiring singer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That help never came but Stephanie and Kelly soon after began a sexual relationship, with the superstar brushing it off when told him she was only 17, according to testimony. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She described sex with Kelly as “humiliating,” describing in lurid detail his demands, and saying he routinely filmed their sexual encounters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He once forced her to perform oral sex on him in a vehicle with others in the car, she said, and sometimes left her naked and alone in rooms for hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“He could put the fear of God in me very quickly,” she said, saying she performed sex acts because “I didn’t feel like I had a choice,” saying she’d suffered past abuse both at home and by a former boss. She also said she feared what the singer would do with their sex tapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around the time she turned 18, Stephanie said she decided to stop seeing Kelly: “I felt used and humiliated and degraded.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I just didn’t want to be abused anymore.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first two weeks of the long-anticipated trial has included searing testimony from accusers, offering a glimpse into the sprawling web of physical, sexual and emotional abuse Kelly, now 54, is accused of steering for more than two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kelly, now 54, denies all charges, and faces between 10 years and life in prison if convicted on all counts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trial is expected to last at least a month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n