R. Kelly to Appear in NYC Court on Sex Charges

R. Kelly is due in a New York City court Friday for an arraignment on charges he sexually abused women and girls — but his attorney says they may be late because he was unable to locate the R&B singer after he landed in New Jersey Thursday.

The jailed Kelly was scheduled to appear at back-to-back hearings in federal court in Brooklyn, where he was expected to enter a not guilty plea and then seek bail, but lawyer Douglas Anton hasn’t been able to meet with his client to prepare for their 10:30 a.m. arraignment, according to a letter Anton sent to Judge Steven Tiscione of the Eastern District of New York.

“I have spent the hours that followed his landing on the phone with the BOP at both New York MCC and Brooklyn MDC trying to locate my client, but no one would provide that information to me, even recognizing I am his attorney, instead directing me to bop.gov to find out where he would be,” Anton wrote, explaining to the judge why he may need more time to meet with Kelly before the scheduled hearings.

The singer arrived at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport Thursday afternoon. Wearing a tan prison shirt and orange shoes, the R&B star had his hands cuffed in front of him and shuffled along the tarmac as an officer escorted him by the arm to a waiting pickup truck.

Chopper 4 followed the caravan, sirens blaring, as it got onto the highway en route to Kelly’s next holding facility, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. But according to Anton, Kelly is still listed in Chicago jail on Federal Bureau of Prisons’ website.

Friday’s hearings follow Kelly’s arrest last month in a separate Chicago case accusing him of engaging in child pornography.

Kelly, 52, is charged in New York with exploiting five victims, identified only as “Jane Does.” According to court papers, they include one he met at one of his concerts and another at a radio station where she was an intern.

The papers allege that Kelly arranged for some of the victims to meet him on the road for illegal sex. He had one victim travel in 2017 to a show on Long Island, where he had unprotected sex with her without telling her “he had contracted an infectious venereal disease” in violation of New York law, they say.

Kelly has been held without bail in Illinois since his arrest. 

Lawyers for Kelly have asked a New York judge to grant him bail so he can better fight the charges as they also seek his release in Chicago. Defense papers label his accusers “disgruntled groupies.”

They are also asking for the judge to make the victims’ names public so they can prepare a proper defense. Anton argued in his letter to the judge that some of the victims who were “under 18” at the time of Kelly’s alleged crimes in the states of Illinois, Connecticut and California were 16 or 17 and their alleged relationship to the singer “may not give rise to criminal conduct” because the age of consent in Connecticut is 16.

The alleged victims “sought out Robert’s attention, even fought each other for it, voluntarily contacted him, came to his shows, pined to be with him,” the defense papers say. “Robert would spend his time and even become friends with and care about these groupies and fans who were dying to be with him.”