R. Kelly has been sentenced to 30 years in prison, as The New York Times reports.
The R&B singer, full name Robert Sylvester Kelly, was found guilty on nine counts of racketeering and sex trafficking charges in September. After decades of accusations involving underage girls and a 2002 indictment on child pornography charges for which he was eventually acquitted in 2008, the trial was the first time that Kelly faced criminal consequences for sex crimes.
The sentence was delivered in a Brooklyn federal court by Judge Ann M. Donnelly, who also presided over the trial. Donnelly, who listened to multiple victim impact statement before making her decision, said that "the public has to be protected from behaviors like this" during the hearing. "These crimes were calculated and carefully planned and regularly executed for almost 25 years," she said. "You taught them that love is enslavement and violence."
R. Kelly declined to make a statement prior to his sentencing.
