When claim after claim began to surface decades ago that rising R&B superstar R. Kelly had sexually abused underage girls, Derrel McDavid says he simply didn’t buy it.
Rather, Kelly’s then-business manager told a federal jury Wednesday that he became convinced, based on insider information, that it all amounted to a “grandiose” plot orchestrated by the singer’s enemies to destroy him.
“It made me sick,” McDavid said.
McDavid, who is now on trial alongside Kelly in Chicago’s federal courthouse, took the stand as promised to testify in his own defense, a potentially risky move that will expose him to cross-examination by federal prosecutors. First, he must finish answering questions from his own attorney, who said he was “less than halfway done” four hours into his examination Wednesday.
Kelly is now serving a 30-year prison sentence for a racketeering conviction last year in New York. In this trial, he faces charges alleging child pornography, obstruction of justice and the enticement of minors into criminal sexual activity. The trial is now in its fourth week.
McDavid is charged with helping Kelly thwart an earlier 2008 child-pornography trial that ended in Kelly’s acquittal. A third defendant, former Kelly assistant Milton “June” Brown, is charged with Kelly and McDavid in a plot to hunt down incriminating tapes of Kelly.
U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber also ruled Wednesday that former Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis, who had been subpoenaed by McDavid’s lawyers, would not have to testify. DeRogatis in 2002 received, from an anonymous source, a video that is now at issue in the trial.
Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean has complained about McDavid’s testimony, insisting it could prejudice her client. However, McDavid’s testimony Wednesday seemed more helpful than harmful to Kelly.
McDavid told the jurors how one woman abandoned a $10 million lawsuit against Kelly for a $250,000 settlement after a lawyer caught her in “so many lies I couldn’t count.” He also said another woman was offered between $10,000 and $12,000 “to give false evidence under oath against R. Kelly.”
Still, crucial context was missing from McDavid’s testimony. He repeatedly pointed to former Kelly managers Barry Hankerson and Demetrius Smith as being behind a plot to destroy Kelly, even describing Smith as someone who “couldn’t be trusted.”
Hankerson’s niece was the singer Aaliyah Haughton, the protege Kelly married in 1994 when she was 15 and Kelly was 27. Kelly believed she was pregnant at the time. So, to make their marriage possible, Smith got $500 from McDavid and offered it to an employee of a “welfare office” who agreed to create a fake ID for Aaliyah, court records show.
Kelly’s marriage to Aaliyah was soon annulled. She died in a plane crash in 2001.
Jurors have so far not heard evidence about the fake ID or Aaliyah other than the mention of Aaliyah’s name by an earlier witness. Leinenweber told the jury then to disregard it. The conduct involving Aaliyah was part of Kelly’s case in New York.
McDavid said Wednesday that he confronted Kelly after an initial lawsuit was filed in 1997 by a woman who claimed to be pregnant with Kelly’s child. He said Kelly insisted he was willing to take a paternity test, and he called the woman’s claim “bullsh--.”
The woman then dropped her paternity claim, filing another lawsuit claiming Kelly sexually abused her when she was a minor, McDavid said. A deposition followed, after which the woman’s lawyer agreed to settle the $10 million lawsuit for $250,000, according to McDavid.
“Cookie cutter” claims followed, brought by the same lawyer, who sought clients against Kelly on a billboard, McDavid said. One of Kelly’s lawyers wrote off the ensuing settlements as the cost of doing business, according to McDavid. But McDavid testified that he felt the lawyer bringing the claims kicked off “a feeding frenzy for anyone who wants to come after this man.”
McDavid also said he was told about an effort by Smith and Hankerson — who McDavid said “hated” Kelly — to convince a woman to lie under oath for money about a sexual encounter with Kelly while she was underage.
Then, when claims surfaced that Kelly had sexually abused a teenager, known to jurors in Kelly’s latest trial as “Jane,” McDavid said he learned of Jane’s repeated denial of the claims.
Now in her 30s, Jane testified last month that Kelly sexually abused her repeatedly starting when she was around 14, after she asked him to be her godfather.
McDavid said Wednesday that, when a rumor surfaced of a sex tape involving Kelly and Jane, McDavid asked Kelly whether it was true.
He said Kelly told him, “f--- you. This is my goddaughter. … Don’t ever question me about this again.”
