R. Kelly’s list of alleged sex crimes keeps adding up as the R&B singer was just charged with two more counts of prostitution and solicitation involving an underage girl in Minnesota.
According to the Associated Press, the incident took place back in 2001 when Kelly invited a girl to his hotel room after a concert. He reportedly paid her $200 to take off her clothes and dance with him. The charges were announced by Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman during a press conference on Monday, where he noted “Minnesota victims deserve their day in court.”
Kelly is already facing dozens of state and federal charges in both Illinois and New York. Just last week, the singer was denied bail after he had been held in jail for multiple counts of sexual abuse, which included charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. During the hearing on Friday, Magistrate Judge Steven Tiscione denied Kelly bail, noting that he would post as a flight risk and danger to public safety. He is accused of operating a “sex cult” where he allegedly recruited girls underage and forced them to engage in sexual activity across multiple states, to which he pleaded not guilty.
These new charges follow another string of accusations that Kelly has faced ever since Lifetime aired the docu-series Surviving R. Kelly earlier this year, outlining two decades-worth of sexual assault allegations. In February, he was arrested on 10 counts of sexual abuse and spent time in and out of jail after failing to pay child support to his ex-wife amid a “financial crisis.” Then, he was charged with 11 new felony sex-related crimes in May and was arrested once again in July after new indictments showed that he allegedly paid-off a family at the center of his 2008 trial over child pornography.
Through and through, Kelly and his lawyer have vehemently denied all allegations, with his lawyer Steve Greenberg calling the new charges “beyond absurd.” However, if convicted on all charges, Kelly could spend the rest of his life in prison.
