JUSTICE FOR AALIYAH'S LEGACY

R KELLY’S COURT CASE REVEALS ALLEGED NEW DETAILS ABOUT HIS TWISTED RELATIONSHIPS

- Jennie Noonan

In addition to her groundbreaking musical impact, the life of celebrated ’90s pop R’n’B singer Aaliyah has been punctuated in the public eye by two dreadful events – her underage entanglement with infamous singer R Kelly and her untimely death at 22. Days before the 20th anniversary of the plane crash that took her life in the Bahamas (see box), more details about her involvement with R Kelly – real name Robert Sylvester Kelly – have been revealed at a New York court hearing.

Aaliyah, who was briefly married to Kelly when she was just 15 years old, is one of six women named by the prosecution in a case against the disgraced rapper facing federal charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. The charges stem from an indictment accusing Kelly, 54, of committing multiple crimes as a leader of an “enterprise” consisting of employees who helped him recruit young women and girls allegedly for sexual relations during a 30-year singing career.

Demetrius Smith, a former assistant and tour manager for Kelly, told a jury on August 20 that in 1994 he bribed an Illinois government employee with $700 to obtain a fake ID for Aaliyah stating she was 18 years old so that Kelly, then 27, could get a marriage licence. In the bombshell Netflix documentary