As of Monday afternoon, Kelly had not yet posted bond, which was set at $1 million. His lawyer, Steven Greenberg, said he was being kept in the jail’s hospital unit for security reasons.
Kelly appeared in Cook County criminal court in Chicago in an orange prison jumpsuit with “DOC” printed on the back. In court, Greenberg asked the judge whether his client would have to settle child support payments he owes to post bond, or if he could just pay $100,000. Judge Lawrence E. Flood said Kelly only needed to pay $100,000.
Greenberg told reporters that Kelly expected to have the necessary cash Monday evening.
Outside the courtroom, a handful of people called “Free R. Kelly!” at members of the media.
Prosecutors in Chicago have put forward four victims, including one teenage autograph seeker whom they say Kelly had sex with for months beginning when she was 16 years old.
Another was a girl he met at a restaurant, at her 16th birthday celebration.
A third was a 24-year-old hairdresser of his, who told prosecutors that Kelly tried to force her to perform oral sex on him. Court documents said she reported that incident to law enforcement officials within two years of when it occurred and handed over a shirt she was wearing that day, which DNA analysis showed had his semen on it. It was not clear why Kelly was not charged in connection with this at the time. Greenberg has said it may have been a consensual encounter.
For years, Kelly, whose real name is Robert Kelly, seemed largely immune to accusations that he sexually abused minors and kept women in a cultlike environment, shielded by a series of nondisclosure agreements. But his behavior came under renewed scrutiny in January after the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” which chronicled the allegations against him, aired on Lifetime.
He was arrested in 2002 on child pornography charges stemming from a tape that prosecutors said showed him having sex with and urinating on an underage girl. But in 2008, he was acquitted on all counts after the girl prosecutors said was in the tape refused to testify.
That same girl is now the fourth alleged victim in the new cases against him, prosecutors said. They also have said that they have a different tape of Kelly and the girl having sex, and Michael Avenatti, the celebrity lawyer who gave the video to law enforcement, has said that it is a recording of a different incident than the earlier tape, which removes any concern about double jeopardy.
Avenatti said Monday that he had obtained a second video of Kelly that showed him having sex with an underage girl. He said he gave the 55-minute-long tape to prosecutors, and that the girl in the video was one of the victims Kelly had already been charged with abusing. In this tape, he said, Kelly “refers to the victim having a 14-year-old body part, a vagina.”
Kelly’s next court date will be March 22.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.