Trapped in the Closet, Indeed

Original Posting here.

There was a really interesting article on the Huffington Post this week (h/t GlennSacks.com) highlighting a case that involves child molestation, a platinum-record pop star, and explicit videos showing this star in various compromising positions. At first blush, you might think Michael Jackson has gotten himself into more hot water on his Neverland Ranch; but no, the pop star in question is none other than R. Kelly, who seems to have been fighting off this perception for years.

Robert Sylvester Kelly's Mug Shot

The reason it feels that way is largely because he has been - he was first accused of child pornography by Chicago police back in 2002, and it's taken the better part of six years for his case to finally make it to trial. The original 21 counts have been whittled down to the current 14, each of which is a class one felony in the state of Illinois, which, if convicted, requires a mandatory sentence of between 4-15 years. Strangely, though, outside of Chicago, such a high-profile and scandalous case doesn't seem to be attracting all that much attention. Bill Wyman of THP writes:

But substantive coverage has been almost nonexistent over the past seven years. Why? Well, there's the ick factor -- who wants to write about a case at the center of which is a video that shows a grown man not just having sex with but urinating into the face of a girl who police say is 13 or 14 years old? There's the racism factor, too; one suspects that if the accusations were about Kelly's having had sex with under-aged white girls, rather than black girls from Chicago's poor neighborhoods, Dan Abrams and Nancy Grace would be all over it.

Wyman is undoubtedly onto something with the racial component. Considering that all it takes is another missing white girl from middle America to enable the collective histrionics of the cable talking heads; one could easily foretell the outrage if the girls in question looked like Mindys and Alisons rather than Tashas and Aaliyahs. But the ick factor? In a hyper-sexualized culture where young girls wear Halloween costumes that their mothers wouldn't have even contemplated a generation ago, a culture where an entire industry has arisen around using a stripper pole as an exercise device, it seems unusual that the mainstream media isn't all over this trial. Just imagine the unprecedented levels of outrage that could be reached!

Given the surplus of prejudicial evidence against Kelly that the jury is seeing in this case, it's difficult to believe that Kelly is going to navigate his way out of this one.

[T]he defense has endured the ignominy of nearly a dozen people testifying they recognize Kelly and an under-aged girl on the tape. The room in which the tape was made was identified. So was a mole on Kelly's back. Just yesterday, a woman testified to personally knowing that Kelly was having sex with the girl who appears on the tape at the center of the case. You might say her perspective on the matter was unique: She'd had group sex with the two of them. Kelly filmed the two of them twice, she testified. She also said Kelly toted around a duffle bag, so he could keep his home-made sex tapes -- some of them with under-age girls -- with him at all times.

With that said, R. Kelly's defense attorney has implemented a creative defense to challenge the provenance of the sex tape at the center of the trial. The defense called Jim DeRogatis as a witness, the reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times who first broke the story in 2000. He subsequently refused to answer questions (citing Fifth Amendment protections) as to whether he made a copy of the alleged sex tape when he received it from an anonymous source in 2002. How interesting it is that the defense is effectively accusing DeRogatis of a crime involving child pornography while simultaneously alleging that R. Kelly is innocent!

Um, Mr. Kelly, What's Going On in Here?

Nobody knows how this lurid trial is going to end, but there's one thing we can remain sure about. R.Kelly's lewd and lascivious proclivities will no longer be trapped in the closet after this month.