During the first day of closing arguments in Brooklyn, a prosecutor sought to knit together the government’s sprawling racketeering case.
R. Kelly was a predator who capitalized on his fame to prey on underage girls and boys and on women, a federal prosecutor said in her closing statements at Mr. Kelly’s federal trial in New York on Wednesday. Mr. Kelly, once one of the brightest stars in pop music, was only able to inflict trauma on the lives of those in his orbit for decades because of a vast network of associates who “served as enablers for his criminal conduct,” the prosecutor, Elizabeth Geddes, said. Those accusations have followed Mr. Kelly for decades. But now, Ms. Geddes said, jurors had an opportunity to make amends for years of overlooked abusive behavior. “For many years, what happened in the defendant’s world stayed in the defendant’s world,” Ms. Geddes, an assistant U.S. attorney, told jurors in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. “But no longer.” The summation offered a dramatic crescendo to the five-week trial, which has included hours of disturbing testimony from Mr. Kelly’s accusers, some of whom had never spoken publicly before. The singer,54, has pleaded not guilty to all the charges. Ms. Geddes’s closing arguments, which spanned more than three hours and will continue on Thursday, illustrated the expansive breadth of the prosecution’s case against the singer — and the steep challenge his defense team has faced in the trial. The racketeering case against Mr. Kelly is built around 14 underlying crimes that federal prosecutors say he committed as part of the criminal enterprise at his command. But the charge itself only requires that two of those crimes be proven. On Wednesday, Ms. Geddes began to construct a final image of Mr. Kelly as a calculated manipulator who destroyed the lives of those around him. She characterized the singer as a volatile man whose “violent temper” led to harsh physical abuse of many women and girls. She told jurors that he often promised visitors fame or success in their careers, while only intending to use them for sex. And she said that Mr. Kelly created a fear-inspiring system of control that entrapped his accusers and prevented them from speaking out.
