As the first week in the R Kelly child pornography case came to an end, 3 more witnesses positively ID'd R Kelly and his underage lover as the couple depicted in a homemade tape...
Another of the victim's childhood friends, now a University of Wisconsin student, her mother, and another of the victim's own relatives say that without a doubt, 41 year old R Kelly is the man shown golden showering a clearly underage girl in the 10 year old sex tape. College student, Audrey Hampton, testified Thursday that she played basketball with the alleged victim and went to school with her for several years. She told the jury "there's no question" that the female on the tape is her childhood friend at age 13 or 14. Audrey said the victim introduced her to Kelly at a party at a downtown Chicago basketball court. She also told the court that rumors started to spread in her neighborhood about a sex tape with her friend in it. Audrey's mother, who says she found a copy of the tape in her daughter's bedroom, testified that she viewed parts of the tape and then threw it in the trash, heartbroken because she too recognized her daughter's friend as the girl on the tape. The final and possibly most damaging testimony came from R&B singer and former R Kelly protégé, Sparkle, who testified that she introduced her 12 year old niece to R Kelly after she started working with the singer/songwriter and that, "Sir, it's Robert and [my niece] on the tape. I know my family. I know them. Trust me." Sparkle said she found out about the tape in December 2001 after she got a phone call from an attorney telling her that a relative of hers was on a sex tape she needed to see. Sparkle told the court the tape tore their family apart. "We were thick as thieves," Sparkle said of the family's closeness before finding out about the tape. "You couldn't break the chain with us. We were tight, tight, tight." But after the the tape came to light, "There was one side and another side," she said. The girl's mother — Sparkle's sister — didn't want to see the tape and didn't want to talk about it, she said.
