FILE – In this June 6, 2019, file photo, singer R. Kelly pleaded not guilty to 11 additional sex-related felonies during a court hearing before Judge Lawrence Flood at Leighton Criminal Court Building in Chicago. An updated federal indictment filed on Friday, Feb. 14, 2020, in Chicago, refers to yet another minor accusing R. Kelly of sexual misconduct, adding to the jailed singer’s mounting legal challenges across three states. (E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune via AP, Pool, File)
CHICAGO (AP) — An updated federal indictment against R. Kelly unsealed Friday in Chicago includes sex abuse allegations involving a new accuser, adding to the jailed singer’s mounting legal challenges across three states.
The 13-count superseding indictment doesn’t add more charges against Kelly. It includes multiple counts of child pornography and isn’t substantially different from the original July indictment, which also had 13 counts.
What’s new in the filing is a reference to an accuser called “Minor 6.” But the indictment no longer includes any reference to a “Minor 2,” meaning there are still a total of five alleged victims in the Chicago federal case.
The indictment offers few details about the new accuser.
It says she met Kelly around 1997 or 1998, when she would have been 14- or 15-years-old. It says Kelly engaged in sexual contact or sexual acts around that time and several years before she turned 18.
In a tweet later Friday, Kelly’s lead attorney, Steve Greenberg, said, “We continue to fight for him and look forward to the day he is free.” He added the hashtag #notguilty.
Kelly, 53, will be arraigned under the reworked indictment. That could happen March 5, a date set previously for a status hearing. The trial date remains April 27, though that will likely be pushed to later this year.
It’s unclear why Minor 2 no longer appears to be on the prosecutors’ list of alleged victims.
Kelly faces several dozen counts of state and federal sexual misconduct charges in Illinois, Minnesota and New York, from sexual assault to heading a racketeering scheme aimed at supplying Kelly with girls.
The Grammy Award-winner was jailed in July and has been awaiting trial at a Chicago federal jail a block from the courthouse where he attends pretrial hearings. He has participated in hearings in his New York case by video.
The federal charges in Chicago accuse Kelly of filming himself having sex with underage girls and of paying off potential witnesses in his 2008 trial — at which he was acquitted — to get them to change their stories.
Kelly has denied ever sexually abusing anyone.
In December, he pleaded not guilty via a video feed to added charges in New York that he schemed to pay for a fake ID for an unnamed female a day before he married R&B singer Aaliyah, then 15, in a secret ceremony in 1994.
Drama surrounding Kelly’s case included what authorities say was a fight in January between two of the singer’s girlfriends living at his home in Trump Tower in Chicago. Joycelyn Savage, 24, has pleaded not guilty to punching and kicking 22-year-old Azriel Clary.
By MICHAEL TARM
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