R. Kelly Trial: Woman Claims Singer Infected Her With Herpes, Paid $200,000 in Secret Settlement

America’s ‘King of R&B’ Robert Sylvester Kelly, also known as R. Kelly, is currently standing trial in Brooklyn over accusations that he sexually abused, trafficked and exploited multiple women and girls. The singer, who is facing a decade behind bars, pleaded not guilty.

R. Kelly is being accused of giving herpes to a woman and then secretly settling the matter with her back in 2004, a New York Court heard on Friday.

The woman, named Kate, said during R. Kelly’s Brooklyn federal court trial that she met the singer in Chicago in 2001 when she was 27 years old.

When the two had sexual intercourse for the first time, the singer apparently decided not to wear a condom despite Kate allegedly telling him that she “worried about multiple sexual partners and the AIDS virus”.

The woman told the court on Friday that she was eventually diagnosed with herpes in 2001. The partners stopped seeing each other in 2004; the same year Kate said she brokered a $200,000 settlement with the star.

Kate claimed that scandalous musician was “never” violent with her or prevented her from going to the bathroom – as some accusers claim. Kate said that she even tried to see Kelly after the settlement was reached.

The singer’s personal doctor confirmed to the court that he had been treating Kelly for herpes for years, according to the Daily Mail.

What is He Being Accused of?

R. Kelly, 54, was arrested in February 2019 over accusations that he abused multiple women, including teens, between 1998 and 2010. He was released on bail and then re-arrested in July the same year over racketeering, sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, kidnapping and other charges.

The man currently faces 22 federal counts from New York and Chicago prosecutors.

The allegations go as far as to claim that Kelly and his aides were running a sex ring of women and minors, both male and female. Prosecutors claim that Kelly also kept his girlfriends at bay by refusing to let them go to the bathroom without permission and punished them for discussing him in his absence.

Defense lawyers Nicole Blank Becker and Thomas Farinella sit with their client R. Kelly during his sex abuse trial at Brooklyn's Federal District Court in a courtroom sketch in New York, U.S., August 31, 2021

© REUTERS / JANE ROSENBERG

Several charges against the singer include accusations that he had exposed women to herpes without them knowing.

The “I Believe I Can Fly” star denies allegations that he had been exploiting his victims, some of them underage, for years and pleaded not guilty to the charges.