

A former girlfriend of R. Kelly’s took the witness stand at his federal trial Thursday and testified that she had sexual contact with Kelly and his underage goddaughter on the behest of the singer, who additionally filmed and directed their encounters.
Lisa Van Allen testified she met “Jane,” Kelly’s goddaughter, in 1998. Jane would have been round 14 years outdated on the time, however Kelly advised Van Allen she was 16, Van Allen mentioned.
The three of them had three sexual encounters over the following three years, Van Allen testified, and Kelly filmed all of them. Van Allen used her palms to mime for the jury the way in which Kelly would arrange the tripod and video digital camera.
Van Allen was calm on the witness stand however appeared considerably nervous, swiveling in her chair and pausing usually to sip from a water bottle. When she started to debate the sexual contact with younger Jane, her face grew very somber.
In the course of the second filmed threesome, in 1999, Van Allen started crying as a result of she didn’t need to take part, she testified.
“(Kelly) mentioned ‘what was he going to do with this?’ … I assume trigger it wouldn’t have been good footage to look at if I’m on there crying.”
An encounter in 2000 was interrupted by Kelly’s workforce, Van Allen mentioned. Kelly ordered “Jane” to cover within the lavatory, she testified, a request he didn’t make of Van Allen.
That very same 12 months, Jane advised Van Allen that she could be getting a PT Cruiser for her sixteenth birthday. Van Allen was upset since she had been underneath the impression Jane was 16 two years earlier, throughout their first sexual encounter, she testified.
After that, Van Allen mentioned, “I didn’t need to do any extra threesomes. I didn’t need to do the primary ones, however I positively didn’t need any extra encounters. As a result of she was 14! She needed to be 14.”
Kelly would carry his intercourse tapes with him in a duffel bag, Van Allen testified. And in some unspecified time in the future across the 12 months 2000, she realized she was alone with that bag, and went on the lookout for any tapes she was on.
“I didn’t need him in possession of them,” she mentioned. “… I didn’t need to do (the threesomes). I didn’t need him taking a look at them or having them in possession.”
Van Allen gave the tape to her buddy Keith Murrell, she testified. It wasn’t till 2007 that she heard there is perhaps copies of the tape on the market, and she or he grew anxious, she mentioned.
She didn’t need it on the market, and thought Kelly would assist her get it again, she testified.
“He had an upcoming trial for the same tape, and on this one it truly mentioned how outdated she was,” she mentioned.
Van Allen met Kelly at his Olympia Fields mansion, and Kelly mentioned he would give her $250,000 to get the tape again. He additionally advised her to cope with McDavid “from this level ahead,” she testified.
After that, she and Murrell introduced the tape again and took a collection of polygraph assessments, she mentioned. They bought among the cash from McDavid in return, and Van Allen was advised they might get the remaining after Kelly’s trial, she mentioned.
McDavid advised her she had failed the third polygraph, she testified, and mentioned “they need to have murked me from the start” — that’s, they need to have killed her.
After that, at McDavid’s behest, she made a false assertion to a lawyer denying she ever had any sexual contact with Jane.
“He advised me to say it and I used to be afraid to not do what he requested,” she says, then broke down crying. “I by no means knew they have been occupied with killing me.”
Van Allen mentioned she was upset about that remark, and advised McDavid she would inform Kelly about it. “He mentioned Rob knew every little thing that was happening,” she mentioned, in an emotional voice.
Lisa Van Allen additionally testified for the prosecution at Kelly’s 2008 trial in Cook dinner County, at which Kelly was in the end acquitted of child-pornography costs.
Van Allen, now 42, testified Thursday that she met Kelly in 1998, when she was 18. She was launched to him at a video shoot and never lengthy afterward started touring to satisfy him in Chicago, she testified.
Quickly afterward, she moved to Chicago outright and commenced a romantic relationship with Kelly, she testified. Kelly stored making her miss her flights when she visited, she mentioned.
“I advised him ‘I couldn’t preserve lacking my flights, I’ll get fired,’” she testified. “… he requested me what did I make and I advised him. He ended up simply giving me the money.”
Kelly would direct her on what to do and what to say throughout their sexual encounters, she testified, and would usually videotape them having intercourse, significantly after they had threesomes, she testified.
Kelly didn’t enable her to talk to or make eye contact with different males in his presence, she mentioned. He would hit her if she didn’t “take heed to Daddy,” she mentioned.
Kelly, 55, is charged with 13 counts of manufacturing of kid pornography, conspiracy to supply little one pornography and conspiracy to hinder justice.
Additionally on trial are McDavid and one other affiliate, Milton “June” Brown, who, based on the indictment, schemed to purchase again incriminating intercourse tapes that had been taken from Kelly’s assortment and conceal years of alleged sexual abuse of underage women.
Jurors within the carefully watched case have to this point heard from 14 different witnesses, together with an alleged sufferer who testified final week Kelly videotaped sexual encounters together with her when she was simply 14, then pressured and in the end paid off her and her household to stay silent. Clips from three of these movies have been proven to the jury on Friday.
This week has been dominated by one other key prosecution witness, Charles Freeman, a Kansas Metropolis merchandiser and who advised the jury Kelly and his associates agreed to pay him as much as one million {dollars} within the early 2000s to search out different incriminating movies earlier than they could possibly be made public.
The plot as described by Freeman on direct examination Tuesday spanned virtually a decade, and unfolded in cities from Chicago to Kansas Metropolis and Atlanta, at Kelly’s music studio, live performance venues and even the singer’s sprawling Olympia Fields mansion, the place Freeman mentioned he was advised to strip bare and get in a pool to show he wasn’t carrying a wire.
However that account got here underneath withering scrutiny throughout practically 5 hours of cross-examination Wednesday, with attorneys for Kelly and his co-defendants attempting to color Freeman as a liar and opportunist who has given inconsistent accounts in regards to the conspiracy over time.
Freeman was a key witness to the guts of the indictment alleging there was a conspiracy to cowl up sexual misconduct by Kelly.
He has recounted his model of the two-decades-old occasions a number of occasions lately, together with at the least three underneath oath: Earlier than a Cook dinner County grand jury, in an affidavit for a federal grand jury, and now at Kelly’s trial.
All these accounts differ from one another, some in vital methods, and attorneys for each Kelly and McDavid pressed him on the discrepancies with growing agitation. The wide-ranging inconsistencies included the place Freeman first discovered the whereabouts of the tape, what number of tapes he took, when he discovered what was on the tape and who was concerned within the preliminary conversations about retrieving it.

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Protection attorneys additionally delved into one other intriguing twist: Freeman, who had remained silent for practically 20 years, was initially delivered to investigators’ consideration in 2019 by California legal professional Michael Avenatti, who has since been convicted of federal crimes of his personal and sentenced to jail.
Freeman at first denied that Avenatti was with him throughout his Cook dinner County grand jury look in February 2019, however acquiesced after Kelly’s legal professional, Jennifer Bonjean, had him evaluate a transcript exhibiting he was within the room.
Neither facet has confirmed whether or not Avenatti might be referred to as as a witness within the trial.
The trial is predicted to final about 4 weeks. Prosecutors on Wednesday advised U.S. District Choose Harry Leinenweber that they’d hoped to relaxation their case in chief by the center of subsequent week, however the prolonged testimony by Freeman could have set that plan again.