R. Kelly and Harvey Weinstein both received additional sentences on Thursday for convictions related to sexual assault crimes. Both cases were highly publicized and exposed many of the issues with sexual assault reporting, investigating and convicting.
The women who spoke out against Weinstein helped bring attention to the #MeToo movement, which activist Tarana Burke founded in 2006.
R. Kelly convicted, sentenced to 20 years in child porn case
R&B singer R. Kelly was on trial in Chicago in federal court for charges of child pornography and enticement of a minor. He received a 20-year prison sentence that he will serve mostly concurrently with a 30-year sentence for a racketeering and sex trafficking conviction, The New York Times reported.
Kelly was accused of sexually abusing his 14-year-old goddaughter and produced three videos of himself doing so. Federal prosecutors were pressing for 25 years in prison added to his previous sentence because his “lack of remorse” could make him a danger to society.
“The only way to ensure he will not reoffend is to impose a sentence that will keep him in prison for the rest of his life,” Jeannice Williams Appenteng, one of the prosecutors, said, per the Times.
One of his victims provided a statement, which attorney Christopher Brown read to the court.
“I have lost my dignity due to Robert Kelly. I have lost my dreams due to Robert Kelly. I have lost my teenage years to Robert Kelly,” the statement from anonymously identified “Jane” read, per CNN.
For three decades, allegations against Kelly surfaced and resurfaced, but it wasn’t until 2002 that he was indicted on child pornography charges, although he was then acquitted in 2008.
After the #MeToo movement had become widely known, reports resurfaced and a 2017 Buzzfeed article revealed further allegations of sex crimes Kelly was performing on underage girls without their consent. In 2019, “Surviving R. Kelly,” a documentary about his alleged crimes, aired on Lifetime. The same year, he was charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and two federal indictments after that, per CNN.
Harvey Weinstein convicted, sentenced for Los Angeles rape
Weinstein was convicted and sentenced to serve 16 years in prison for raping a woman in a hotel in Beverly Hills in 2013. The sentencing further manifests the disgraced Hollywood director will spend the rest of his life in prison for the heinous crimes, the Los Angeles Times reported.
He is currently serving 23 years in New York for being convicted of sexually assaulting women in the state.
The woman was not named and testified in court, saying, “There is no prison sentence long enough to erase the damage. ... He deserves to experience the same shame, humiliation and fear as I did,” per the Los Angeles Times.
The court found him guilty of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object, according to The New York Times.
Debra Katz, one of the lawyers on the case, said she hopes the conviction inspires other assault survivors to come forward and speak out about their experience.
“I do think courage begets courage ,” she said, per the Times. “It seems clear that prosecutors are going to keep taking these cases and that people accused and convicted of sexual violence are going to serve long prison terms. Every time there’s a setback, people say, ‘Is the movement over?’ Of course not. There’s always going to be setbacks, but there’s no going back.”