Mr. Kelly first made an advance on him inside the singer’s Maybach, when Alex was about 20 years old, he said. “I recall him just talking to me, then forcefully kissing me, licking my face,” he said, adding that afterward Mr. Kelly told him “just to be open-minded.”
During sexual encounters with Mr. Kelly, he said the singer referred to him as “nephew,” although, Alex testified, they are not related. He said he was directed to call Mr. Kelly “Daddy.” Sometimes afterward, he said, Mr. Kelly would “slap $100 or two in my hand just for gas, my time.”
On one occasion, he said Mr. Kelly told him he had a gift for him, and instructed him to wait in a room Alex said he believed was the bedroom of one of the singer’s children. There, Mr. Kelly had set up an iPad and production lights, and directed Alex to take off his clothes. Then, the singer “sent the half-naked lady into the room.”
Understand the R. Kelly Trial
What are the charges? Mr. Kelly is facing one charge of racketeering based on sexual exploitation of children, kidnapping and forced labor, and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting anyone across state lines for prostitution.
“He pretty much told us to go at it, but we didn’t know what to do because he was still in the room,” he said, adding that the singer then “told us to start kissing each other — and to mean it.”
Mr. Kelly began recording, Alex said, and then masturbating as he directed them through a series of sex acts.
During the encounters, the women — whose names he did not know — appeared “zombie-ish,” he said.
But it was Mr. Kelly’s interactions with Aaliyah that began to focus public scrutiny on accusations of sexual misconduct by the singer.
In the mid-1990s, Vibe magazine reported the details of the fake identification that was procured so Aaliyah could marry Mr. Kelly in 1994. Witnesses have said that the union came about because Mr. Kelly believed that Aaliyah may have been pregnant and feared that he could be prosecuted for statutory rape.