R. Kelly Chicago Trial: Jury Views 17 Video Clips Showing Singer's Sexual Abuse Act, Star Witness Completes Testimony

Graphic clips from three sexual recordings of R. Kelly sexually abusing his goddaughter when she was only 14 were shown to the jury during his child pornography trial.

The voice of the young victim, under the alias "Jane," talking to R. Kelly about her sexuality could be heard even if the visuals of the late 1990s videos were hidden from view for the rest of the courthouse, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Key Witness Testifies in R. Kelly Trial

The man then tells the young girl to follow commands and offers her "sexually explicit instructions" while she apologizes. The government case against R. Kelly, a convicted pedophile, is centered around the videos that were released on Friday. R. Kelly is accused of seducing kids for intimacy, creating child pornography, and manipulating his 2008 pornography trial.

Following the release of the tapes, R. Kelly's legal team claimed that it was impossible to confirm the authenticity of the recordings rather than openly contesting whether the singer could be seen in them. According to the prosecution, R. Kelly allegedly recorded the Jane videos between 1998 and 2000 in a room with a log cabin theme at his house in Chicago's North Side.

Additionally, the defense just reiterated Jane's long-standing denial that she was the woman in the graphic videos rather than providing the jury with an alternative account of Jane's tale regarding the recordings. According to Daily Mail, R. Kelly and his two co-defendants are accused of threatening Jane and buying witnesses to modify their evidence during that trial, despite the fact that R. Kelly and his counsel had previously claimed that he was exonerated for actions connected to the videos back in 2008.

The woman, now 37, who spent four hours on Thursday detailing the alleged abuse she allegedly endured as a young teen at the hands of Kelly, was cross-examined by Kelly's lead attorney Jennifer Bonjean earlier on Friday. Jane appeared to be close with R. Kelly, according to a string of texts between the two from 2018 to 2019, which Bonjean presented to the court. At one point, Jane even invited the disgraced singer to a birthday celebration.

Following the debut of the devastating "Surviving R," the woman also seemed to give Kelly a message of encouragement. The singer's decades-long history of assaulting young women sexually was exposed in R. Kelly's documentary.

Jane said that she made many attempts to get in touch with him in 2019 while she considered whether to talk to authorities in-depth about Kelly for the first time after they claimed to have more tapes of the two. R. Kelly, who maintains his innocence, was found guilty in a New York federal court last year of leveraging his stardom to molest followers and is currently serving a 30-year jail term.

R. Kelly's Team To Question Government's Star Witness

The government's star witness, who testified at R. Kelly's federal trial in Chicago that the R&B singer sexually assaulted her hundreds of times before she turned 18, will be available for questioning by the defense team on Friday.

In the 2008 trial, which involved state charges, several jurors claimed they were forced to acquit the R&B singer because the girl, who was by that time an adult, refused to testify. On the witness stand on Thursday, Jane admitted that, in 2002, when she claimed that she was not on the video, she lied to a state grand jury.

Friday morning was the start date for Kelly's legal representative to question Jane in opposition. At the end of the day on Thursday, a prosecutor questioned Jane about her sudden decision to start being open about what occurred with Kelly., as per PBS News.

R. Kelly was someone she cared about and occasionally lived with into her 20s, Jane claimed. She said, "I became sick of living with his lies." She continued by saying that federal prosecutors gave her the assurance she wouldn't face charges of lying to the police if she gave an honest statement during this trial.