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Disgraced singer R. Kelly’s sex abuse trial started last week.

If you’ve watched Surviving R. Kelly, or the follow-up, Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning, then nothing should really surprise you at this point.

That being said, it’s still jarring to see women stand up in court and outline exactly how Kelly would allegedly mistreat them, often while they were underage.

The latest witness says she met Kelly when she was 17 and he was 48, and alleges that he gave her herpes on purpose.

Here’s Sky News:

The pair first came into contact in 2015, when the witness was invited to Kelly’s hotel in Orlando Florida following a gig during which the then-48-year-old paid “a lot of attention to her”…

However, once she met the singer, he said he needed to be pleased sexually before she could audition.

“I told him I did not come to please him, I came for an audition,” Doe testified.

“I just wanted to sing,” she added. “I genuinely wanted his input.”

The woman, named only as Jane Doe, allegedly had sex with Kelly on multiple occasions.

According to CNN, Doe testified that Kelly carried multiple iPads in a backpack, which he would use to film his sexual encounters:

Toward the end of the summer of 2015, Doe testified that sex became painful.

“I got to the point where I couldn’t physically even walk,” she testified.

After visiting a doctor, Doe found out she’d contacted herpes. She testified she was “devastated” after the diagnosis, saying she felt Kelly had “purposely given me something that he knew that he had.”

She testified that Kelly had not used protection with her on many occasions and that he had not disclosed he had been diagnosed with genital herpes several years earlier.

At some stage, when Doe confronted him about the herpes he had given her, Kelly is alleged to have responded by saying “I think your pussy is broken.”

Doe also claims that Kelly told her to smear faeces on her face and act as though she enjoyed it, while he filmed, which she refused to do.

She claims that videos like these would later be used against them if they went against Kelly’s wishes.

The woman alleges that Kelly gave her a set of rules she had to abide by, like never leaving a room she was staying in without asking for permission, and the abuse gradually worsened:

When she was still 17, Doe testified Kelly told her he would need to “chastise” her, or spank her, as a “way to help me be better.”

“I would get chastised nearly every two to three days. Spankings,” she testified. “He would leave bruises and sometimes it would make my skin tear.”

The spankings eventually led to beatings, she testified. One day, when she was still 17, she said Kelly beat her after learning she had told friends about her sexual relationship with the singer, according to her testimony.

After she fell pregnant in 2017, she alleges that Kelly pressured her into having an abortion, saying he told her “he still wanted me to keep my body tight”.

Last week, Jerhonda Pace told jurors that she started a six-month sexual relationship with Kelly when she was 16, during which time he physically abused her.

She says she was told to call Kelly ‘Daddy’ and make a point of acknowledging him if he entered a room.

Failure to do so, reports The New York Times, came with instant repercussions:

…in one instance, she failed to do so.

“That’s when he slapped me and choked me until I passed out,” she said, recalling collapsing to the floor of Mr. Kelly’s Chicago-area home. “I remember him just putting his hand around my neck.”

She added: “He spit in my face and told me to put my head down in shame,” before Mr. Kelly forced her to perform a sex act on him.

Pace alleges that Kelly would ask her to wear her hair in pigtails and dress like a Girl Scout during sex, which he also filmed.

When Pace told him she was 16, he allegedly responded by telling her to say she was 19 and act 21.

The trial continues.

[sources:sky&cnn&nytimes]