Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused embattled R&B singer R. Kelly of bribing an Illinois official to create false identification for 15-year-old singer Aaliyah Haughton on Aug. 30, 1994, according to an indictment and a source close to the investigation.
Aaliyah died in a plane crash in 2001.
Earlier this year, Kelly’s lawyer Steven Greenberg claimed on “Good Morning America” that Aaliyah lied about her age at the time, unbeknown to Kelly: “My understanding is that she did not claim to be 15, and in order to get married, she had to lie about her age.”
The new charge was added to an existing, sweeping, federal racketeering indictment against Kelly, which accuses him of coercing several women and at least two underage girls into illegal sexual activity. It also accuses him of kidnapping one victim.
Kelly additionally faces state charges in Illinois for allegedly sexually abusing four individuals, three of whom were under the age of 17 at the time of the alleged crimes.
Kelly’s alleged decades of sexual misconduct were the subject of the Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” which prompted public scrutiny of the singer in the weeks before the indictment was passed down. The show also spurred Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to make a public plea requesting potential witnesses or victims to come forward.
Before then, “for more than two decades, the recording industry turned a blind eye to Kelly’s behavior as his career continued to thrive and he was afforded every luxury of a chart-topping superstar,” The Washington Post’s Geoff Edgers wrote last year in an expansive report of Kelly’s alleged crimes.
Kelly remains in federal custody in Illinois.
Emily Yahr contributed to this report.
