New York, Europe Brief News – US singer R. Kelly received a 30-year prison sentence over sexual abuse charges.
The R&B artist, 55, was convicted last September in New York of racketeering and sex trafficking crimes.
The artist had faced years of allegations and the judge on Wednesday said he had an “indifference to human suffering”.
Lawyers for the singer, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, say he will appeal.
Ahead of his sentencing, a handful of women took the stand to confront R. Kelly.
A woman identified only as Angela called the singer a Pied Piper who “grew in wickedness” with every new victim, while others who were not named testified he had broken their spirits.
“I literally wished I would die because of how you made me feel,” said one.
Dressed in prison khakis and dark glasses, Kelly declined to make a statement of his own and did not react as the verdict was handed down.
Survivors of Kelly’s abuse held hands and prayed as US District Court Judge Ann Donnelly began reading his sentence. Kelly — who wore a tan prison uniform, dark-rimmed glasses and a black mask at the hearing in federal court in Brooklyn — showed no emotion.
“You left in your wake a trail of broken lives,” Donnelly told Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly.
In deciding the sentence, Donnelly said she considered Kelly’s own traumatic childhood, during which his attorneys said he was repeatedly sexually abused by a family member and a landlord.
“It may explain, at least in part, what led to your behavior,” the judge said. “It most surely is not an excuse.”
Jovante Cunningham, a former backup singer for Kelly, praised the sentence
