Breaking: R. Kelly Indicted On 10 Counts Of Aggravated Sexual Abuse, No-Bail Arrest Warrant Approved

Anne Branigin

There were decades of alle­ga­tions. There was a crim­i­nal tri­al on charges of child pornog­ra­phy. There were hash­tag cam­paigns and open let­ters. There was a high-pro­file series doc­u­ment­ing the sto­ries of his alleged vic­tims. Now, there is a no-bail war­rant out for Robert “R.” Kelly on 10 counts of aggra­vat­ed child sex­u­al abuse, approved by a Cook County judge on Friday. 
Multiple out­lets, includ­ing the Chicago Sun-Times and USA Today, are report­ing the new charges may have stemmed from a recent­ly sur­faced video pro­vid­ed by attor­ney Michael Avenatti, alleged­ly show­ing Kelly hav­ing sex with a 14-year-old girl. The promi­nent attorney’s com­ments on Twitter also point to this.

“It’s over,” tweet­ed Avenatti as news of the charges came in. “The day of reck­on­ing for R Kelly has arrived.” 

According to USA Today, a spokes­woman for the Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx con­firmed to the Associated Press that charges had been filed against the embat­tled R&B singer. Foxx has sched­uled a press con­fer­ence for 3:00 pm E.T. to go over the new charges, with Avenatti hold­ing one imme­di­ate­ly after. Kelly’s first court date is slat­ed for March 8, accord­ing to court records. Kelly was recent­ly released by his record label, RCA, fol­low­ing a back­lash against the singer spurred by the dream hamp­ton-helmed docu-series Surviving R. Kelly. The doc­u­men­tary con­tained no new alle­ga­tions against the singer but focused on shar­ing the sto­ries of sur­vivors who said Kelly had groomed, coerced, and abused them for years — with the aid of his inner cir­cle.
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