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Guilty nine times: R. Kelly listens to the verdict (court drawing)
Photo: JANE ROSENBERG / REUTERS
She hid out of fear for two decades.
Even now that her tormentor will remain behind bars, she only dares to go public under a pseudonym.
"Finally," explains the woman who calls herself Sonya, "I can live my life in freedom and begin the healing process."
Sonya has these words read out by Gloria Allred, her lawyer.
In a pink jacket and pearl necklace, the star lawyer stands before the US district court in Brooklyn.
"Justice," she says, "has been done."
Inside, the jury has just found R&B singer R. Kelly guilty of sexual abuse.
It was the first #MeToo trial, the victims of which, for almost 30 years, were all black, as was the defendant.
Allred's client Sonya was one of them, she was in her early twenties when Kelly molested her in 2003.
Others - as well as one of two boys - were even minors.
"I've been a lawyer for 47 years," says Allred, who also represented those affected in the proceedings against former producer Harvey Weinstein and TV actor Bill Cosby.
"Of all the sex offenders I've pursued, Mr. Kelly is the worst."
The seven men and five women of the jury apparently think similarly.
After just nine hours of counseling behind closed doors, relatively little time for such a legally complex case, they return to the windowless courtroom on the fourth floor.
There they confirm all charges against the fallen superstar, including kidnapping and forced labor, with an unequivocal verdict: Guilty - nine times in a row.
Kelly, 54, stares into space and does not make a face, only his lower jaw seems to grind slightly back and forth under the black corona mask.
He is now threatened with life imprisonment.
He will have to stay in prison until the formal sentence is announced, which is not due to take place here until May 2022, as another similar trial is about to take place in Chicago.
The almighty, long untouchable R. Kelly
The Brooklyn process is also the first of the #MeToo era to raise uncomfortable questions for the US music industry. Kelly had been haunted by rumors about this for a quarter of a century, but for a long time it didn't hurt his career, which took off in 1996 with the mega-hit "I Believe I Can Fly". Even as the allegations became more and more concrete, whether through investigative reports or the sensational TV documentary "Surviving R. Kelly". Kelly was on trial in Chicago in 2008, but was acquitted because the alleged victim became fearful.
He's not lucky this time. Nine women and two men testified against him during the six-week trial, as did 34 other witnesses, including many former employees. From 1994 to 2018 they not only knew about the torments of the young women in the catacombs of his studio complex. Rather, they had made this torment possible, encouraged, and covered - a criminal gang, according to the judiciary, which fulfilled the penal code of organized crime and at the head of which stood an all-powerful, long inviolable R. Kelly.
Probably the most serious incriminating material, however, came from a dead person, the singer Aaliyah, who died in a plane crash in 2001.
Kelly had "discovered" Aaliyah, abused her too, and married in 1994.
Aaliyah was 15 years old at the time.
Kelly bribed a government official for a fake ID that said her age was 18.
The jury believed the victims
It took the prosecution three days to summarize all of the evidence in their closing statement.
The statements and circumstantial evidence - including videos that Kelly had made of his own sexual crimes - were so shocking that the jury only followed them with headphones and it was not just the US journalists in court who found it difficult to describe them objectively afterwards.
Most of his victims were fans Kelly met at concerts or other PR events.
Others hoped to get into the music business through him.
What happened next, at least not before a court of all proportions had become known.
"What happened in the defendant's world remained hidden in the defendant's world for years," said prosecutor Elizabeth Geddes.
"But no longer."
For the first time Kelly's victims dared to take the stand here in Brooklyn - and the jury believed them.
The jury believed Jerhonda Pace, who testified on the first day she was 16 and still a virgin when Kelly started sexually and physically abused her.
The jury believed Sonya, who described how Kelly drugged her, locked her in a dark room for days and abused her in 2003 while she was an intern at a radio station.
As a "genius" he can do what he wants
The jury believed a woman named Stephanie who testified that Kelly filmed her having sex when she was 17.
As early as 1999, he boasted of his preference for minors: As a »genius«, he could do what he wanted.
The jury believed two men named Louis and Alex who testified that Kelly forced them to have sex with him and others.
Louis was 17, Alex was 20.
This was backed up, sometimes reluctantly, by assistants, bodyguards, chauffeurs, sound engineers, private doctors, and other ex-employees who, according to the indictment, helped Kelly "select, attract, and exploit girls, boys, and young women for sexual gratification." Kelly made both his victims and his employees submissive through "manipulation, threats and physical abuse."
Many of the cases would normally be statute-barred.
But the public prosecutor's office linked them to the additional charge of organized crime, which is usually only used against drug cartels or the mafia and enables older crimes to be taken into account.
Since Kelly often transported his victims across US state borders in private jets and tour buses, the Department of Homeland Security also helped with the investigation.
So that charge ended up being much stronger than the last one from 2008.
"Talking about abuse is not easy"
The defense had little to counter this.
She only called five witnesses who often contradicted each other.
Kelly herself did not testify;
instead, lawyer Deveraux Cannick compared him in his closing argument with civil rights icon Martin Luther King.
"Talking about abuse is not easy," said Jerhonda Pace, the first witness, after the verdict on Instagram.
“But I did.
My statement created a domino effect. "
"May this be a message for other celebrities who use their fame to abuse their fans and others," says Allred.
"The question is not whether the law will catch up with you, the question is when."
Of course, this guilty verdict is by no means the rule.
The verdict against Bill Cosby for sexual assault was overturned in June due to a procedural error and the 84-year-old was released.
He is reportedly already working on new TV projects.
R. Kelly's guilt is also denied by some fans.
Dozens gathered in the park across from the court every day during the trial and played his hits loudly.
"We're not giving up," yelled a woman in an Afro and Kelly T-shirt crying into a megaphone on Monday.
"Free Robert Sylvester Kelly!"
The song that is echoing out of the speakers is called »Shut Up«.