Woman who says R. Kelly abused her as a virgin, 16, returns to testify on day two of his trial

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R. Kelly forced a 16-year-old virgin to go three days without using the bathroom and demanded she dress like a Girl Scout and wear her hair in pigtails during sex, the alleged victim told a New York court on day two of the star’s federal sex abuse trial.  

Jerhonda Pace, now 28, took the stand in Brooklyn’s Federal District Court again Thursday to testify about the six months of alleged abuse she suffered at the hands of Kelly, now 54. 

Pace, named in court as ‘Jane Doe No. 4’, said Kelly would often film their sexual encounters after they started having sex in 2009, when she was just 16 and he was 42. 

The alleged victim had testified Wednesday that Kelly lured her to his mansion and was happy to learn she was a virgin because he wanted to ‘train’ her to please him sexually.

She told the court how he controlled her with his so-called ‘Rob’s rules’, denying her from eating or using the bathroom without his permission, making her call him ‘daddy’ and – in one violent incident – choking her until she passed out when she failed to submit to his demands.  

Pace provided further details of this alleged abuse Thursday, telling the court that if she was ‘on his bad side’, it could be up to three days before he would allow her to use the bathroom. 

Kelly’s attorney Deveraux Cannick tried to pick holes in her testimony under cross-examination, presenting the heavily-pregnant mom-of-four with a photo of herself in Kelly’s bed and questioning why the then-teen hadn’t said no to the older star’s advances. 

Cannick also tried to paint her as a liar and a ‘groupie’ by claiming she had the wrong dates for her meetings with Kelly and suggesting – incorrectly – that she had confused her age at the time of the alleged encounters. 

Pace was the first witness called by the prosecution Wednesday on the first day of Kelly’s long-awaited trial. 

She is one of six women in the nine-count federal racketeering indictment which could see the biggest star in R&B spend the rest of his life behind bars.  

Kelly is accused of being the ringleader of a criminal enterprise for almost three decades where he and his entourage recruited women, underage boys and girls for his sexual pleasure, abused and controlled his victims and used sex tapes to blackmail them.  

Some of the victims were also allegedly trafficked across state lines for sex with the singer while he allegedly gave two of the accusers herpes by having unprotected sex with them and not disclosing he had the virus.

He is charged with nine counts including racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, kidnapping, bribery, sex trafficking and forced labor between 1994 and 2018 relating to six alleged victims. 

At least three of the alleged victims were underage and all were aged between 15 and 22 at the time of the alleged crimes. 

One of the six women is late singer Aaliyah who Kelly married when she was just 15 and he was 27. Kelly is accused of bribing an Illinois official in 1994 to obtain fake ID for Aaliyah so they could wed in a scheme to silence the teen who was reportedly pregnant with his child.  

Kelly strongly denies all the accusations. 

He faces up to life in prison if convicted on all counts and is also facing separate state and federal charges in Illinois and Minnesota.  

On Thursday, jurors were shown screenshots of messages and a call log between Pace and Kelly in early 2010, including a text from him asking her to ‘Please call’.

A photo was also shown to the court of the alleged victim with ‘Rob’ tattooed on her chest in homage to the star, whose real name is Robert Sylvester Kelly. 

Pace said she has since covered over the tattoo with a black heart. 

During cross-examination, Kelly’s attorneys questioned Pace about why her 16-year-old self ‘just took off your clothes’ on her first visit to Kelly’s Illinois mansion rather than saying no to the older star and leaving, reported Buzzfeed.   

The defense also accused Pace, now a pregnant mother-of-four, of ‘stalking’ the Grammy-Award winning artist and deceiving him by lying about her age when they first met.

‘You were in fact stalking him, right?’ Cannick asked. 

Pace replied ‘that is not right’ and also said she ‘knew I had lied about my age’ at first – something she had told the court in Wednesday’s testimony. 

Cannick also slipped up as he tried to undermine Pace’s credibility, by suggesting she claimed to have aged two years between meeting Kelly and the first time they had sex. 

Pace said she was 14 when she met Kelly during his child porn trial on April 1 2008 and 16 when he allegedly abused her in May 2009. 

‘So you advanced two years in one year, in one month?’ Cannick questioned.

Pace told the attorney this was correct as her birthday is April 19, putting her 14 and 16 respectively at those times.

Cannick also accused Pace of profiting financially from her alleged encounters with Kelly, as they mounted their defense on claiming the singer is the victim of lies being peddled by groupies and fans. 

The attorney confronted her with a lawsuit settlement she signed agreeing she never revealed to Kelly that she was a minor. Pace said it was in exchange for hush money and ‘didn’t see the agreement before I signed it’.

Cannick also asked her about the money she had earned through telling her story including from writing her 2018 book ‘A Life Beyond Abuse’.  

The 28-year-old told the court she was only paid for the book, for which she said she earned between $25,000 and $100,000, reported USA Today.

When pressed by Cannick about whether the book was ‘accurate and with no embellishment’, Pace insisted it was. 

Kelly listened to his accuser’s testimony, dressed in a blue suit and a mask, after the judge asked Thursday that all courtroom attendees wear a face covering when not speaking. 

Pace testified Wednesday that she first met Kelly aged just 14 when she attended every day of his 2008 child pornography trial – in which he was found not guilty due to lack of sufficient evidence.

She said she then met up with Kelly at a party two years later when she was 16 and they began a sexual relationship. 

When she told him her age and that she was a virgin, Kelly allegedly told her he was happy she was a virgin and urged her to pretend to be 21.   

Over the next six months, Kelly forced her to follow what were known as ‘Rob’s rules’, which included taking away her cell phone, denying her food or using the bathroom without his permission, forcing her to wear certain things and making her call him ‘daddy’, she told the court Wednesday.

Pace told jurors she last saw Kelly in 2010 when he spit on her, slapped her and choked her until she passed out. When she came around, he allegedly made her perform oral sex on him and he ejaculated on her face. 

The court was shown the blue t-shirt that Pace said she used to wipe Kelly’s semen off her face following the encounter. The prosecution said it contained his DNA.  

Before Pace took the stand, the defense and prosecution gave their opening statements kicking off the trial that is expected to last around a month.  

Prosecutors described the 54-year-old as a ‘predator’ who used ‘every trick in the predator handbook’ to groom his victims, blackmailed them with sex tapes and violently beat them if they failed to comply with his demands. 

‘This case is not about a celebrity who likes to party a lot,’ Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Cruz Melendez told the jury. ‘This case is about a predator.’ 

However, Kelly’s attorney instead claimed that Kelly was the victim of groupies who wanted the ‘notoriety of being with a superstar’ and had enjoyed ‘beautiful’, consensual relationships with him but were now turning against him.

The defense sought to discredit the accusers, telling jurors they will have to wade through ‘a mess of lies’. 

The anonymous jury – of seven men and five women – is expected to hear testimony from multiple accusers during the trial including four of the five surviving women in the indictment – identified as Stephanie, Sonja, Jerhonda, Zel and Faith. 

Other female victims are also expected to testify and at least one male victim who claims he was sexually abused by Kelly after meeting him in McDonalds when he was just 17.

Kelly’s former associates are also expected to take the witness stand after turning government cooperators to testify how his entourage of managers, bodyguards and other employees helped him recruit women and girls – and sometimes boys – for sexual exploitation. 

The identities of these cooperating witnesses has not been revealed but it will be the first time they have spoken publicly about the allegations against the singer.  

Some of Kelly’s former associates such as Richard Arline were arrested on suspicion of threatening and harassing the star’s accusers last summer. 

Arline, who allegedly offered one of his alleged victims $500,000 to buy their silence, pleaded guilty in February.  

Kelly was arrested on the New York federal charges in 2019 and has been held behind bars for almost two years in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn – the same jail housing Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell.

The R&B star’s arrest and trial was years in the making after he has faced accusations of sex abuse for decades, ever since his relationship with Aaliyah to light in 1994. 

Allegations of sex tapes involving young girls started emerging and he was arrested on child porn charges in 2003. 

The singer went to trial on these charges in Chicago in 2008 but was acquitted due to a lack of evidence, freeing him to revive his music career.

The allegations caught up with him again when several women spoke out about the alleged abuse by the star – and the coverup of his actions and silencing of his accusers by his inner circle – in the Lifetime documentary ‘Surviving R. Kelly.’

Kelly is perhaps best known for his smash hit ‘I Believe I Can Fly,’ a 1996 song that became an inspirational anthem played at school graduations, weddings, advertisements and elsewhere.   

Day one of R. Kelly’s trial: ‘Predator’ R. Kelly ‘said ‘that’s good’ when fan club member, 16, told him she was a virgin and once ‘choked her until she passed out’, first accuser tells the court     

On day one of R. Kelly’s trial: 

Accuser Jerhonda Pace told the court she was sexually abused by Kelly when she was 16 She told the court Kelly was happy she was a 16-year-old virgin because he wanted to ‘train her’ sexually He forced her to follow his ‘rules’, took away her cell phone, denying her food or using the bathroom without permission, and making her call him ‘daddy’, she told the courtPace told the court Kelly choked her unconscious in one incident in 2010 then made her perform oral sex on him; the court was shown the shirt Pace said she wiped Kelly’s semen on from the encounterProsecutors described Kelly as a ‘predator’ who groomed his victims, blackmailed them with sex tapes and violently beat them if they didn’t comply with his demandsThe defense claimed Kelly was the victim of ‘fans’ who wanted the ‘notoriety of being with a superstar’ and told jurors they would be faced with a ‘mess of lies’Prosecutors said one alleged victim named ‘Sonja’ will testify that the singer locked her in a room for three days and sexually abused her while she was unconscious The judge denied the defense’s final bid to dismiss the case, where they had argued herpes is not life-threatening so Kelly shouldn’t be charged with passing the STD to a minor The judge also granted prosecutors permission to include evidence they claim shows sexual abuse by the star back in 1991 and which relates to the charges over his marriage to Aaliyah 

On day one of R. Kelly’s trial, the court heard from Jerhonda Pace, one of six women in the federal indictment, who said she was sexually abused by the star when she was 16. 

Pace testified that she first met Kelly aged 14 when she attended every day of his 2008 child pornography trial before meeting up with him again at a party two years later when she was 16 and he was 42. She said she told him initially she was 19.

Kelly then allegedly invited her to his mansion a few days later and told her to put on her swimsuit and disrobe in front of him.

When the two began kissing and he performed oral sex on her, she told the court she ‘felt uncomfortable’ lying about her age and told him she was actually 16 and showed him her state ID.

Kelly allegedly responded ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ and urged her to keep saying she was 19 and ‘act 21’.

Kelly was allegedly happy she was a virgin, telling her ‘that’s good’ and said he ‘was going to train me on how to please him sexually,’ she testified. 

Pace said she continued to see and have sex with Kelly over the next six months, with Kelly often filming their encounters.

During this time, Kelly allegedly made her follow a strict set of rules, including making her wear baggy clothes, having her call him ‘Daddy,’ taking her cell phone away and forbidding her from eating food or using the bathroom without his permission. 

Pace said she was forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement, and a letter full of false admissions that claimed she had stolen money and jewelry from him, which prosecutors allege was a form of blackmail by Kelly.  

On the final day she spent in Kelly’s house in 2010, Pace said she was distracted and didn’t immediately acknowledge Kelly’s presence when he entered so he slapped her and choked her until she passed out. 

When she came around, he allegedly spat in her face and told her to put her head down in shame before making her perform oral sex on him.

Pace said Kelly ejaculated on her face and she wiped Kelly’s spit and semen on a blue T-shirt that was presented in court Wednesday as evidence. 

In the prosecution’s opening statements, Assistant US Attorney Maria Cruz Melendez told the jury Kelly used ‘every trick in the predator handbook’ to groom his victims, blackmailed them with sex tapes and violently beat them if they failed to comply with his demands.   

‘This case is not about a celebrity who likes to party a lot,’ she said. ‘This case is about a predator.’   

The prosecutor said Kelly lured in children and women by inviting them to join him after shows with backstage passes then ‘dominated and controlled them physically, sexually and psychologically.’ 

Kelly allegedly made his victims create sex tapes that he then used to blackmail them into silence and would punish his victims with ‘violent spankings and beatings’ if they didn’t do what he demanded of them.  

However, Kelly’s defense instead claimed he was the victim of ‘fans’ who wanted the ‘notoriety of being with a superstar’ and had enjoyed ‘beautiful’, consensual relationships with him and were now turning on him.  

Attorney Nicole Blank Becker accused the alleged victims of lying, warning jurors they’ll have to sort through ‘a mess of lies’ from women with an agenda.

‘We believe their testimony will crumble,’ Becker told jurors. 

‘There will be so many untruths told to you, ladies and gentlemen, that even the government won’t be able to untangle the mess of lies.’ 

‘Don’t assume everybody’s telling the truth,’ she added.  

Before opening statements, Judge Ann Donnelly threw out the defense’s final last-ditch attempt to dismiss the case.

Kelly’s attorneys had argued herpes is not life-threatening so Kelly shouldn’t be charged with passing it to a minor. 

They specifically argued the herpes exposure charge should be dropped because herpes is a virus and not ‘an acute, bacterial venereal disease such as syphilis or gonorrhea.’ 

They also argued that racketeering charges should be dismissed because they said they fell outside the five-year statute of limitations.  

The judge denied the request to dismiss the case early Wednesday.

She also ruled on other motions, including granting prosecutors permission to include evidence they claim shows sexual abuse by the star back in 1991 and which relates to the charges over his marriage to Aaliyah.