Conflicting pictures emerge of alleged R. Kelly victim
(Agencies)
2008-06-10 16:01
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Some of the testimony has focused on her physical features.
A middle school basketball coach said he recognized the alleged victim as the female in the tape by her high forehead, saying he and her friends would joke with her about it.
"You were joking about a seventh grade girl having a big forehead?" defense attorney Marc Martin snapped at Joel Rhea, sounding incredulous. "The kids were," Rhea responded.
A relative testifying for the defense, Charlotte Edwards, told jurors the female in the video couldn't be the alleged victim because the breasts of that person were too large.
Prosecution witness Lisa Van Allen, 27, told jurors she had three-way sex with Kelly and the alleged victim several times, starting in 1998. During one encounter in a trailer at the set of a music-video shoot, the alleged victim "had to run into the bathroom naked" when someone came to the door because Kelly didn't want others to see her there, Van Allen testified.
Prosecutors said they would not ask the alleged victim to testify. The defense hasn't said whether they will, though Kelly attorney Sam Adam Jr. asked jurors in opening statements why prosecutors chose not to call her.
"One answer," he said, his voice booming. "One: It's not her on that tape."
To bolster their argument that the female on the tape and the alleged victim couldn't be the same person, the defense has taken frequent opportunities to praise her character.
"(She) is as sweet, as nice and as lovely a person there is," Adam said during opening arguments.
He juxtaposed that image with the female in the video, who takes money from the man before having sex with him. "The woman on that tape is getting paid," he said. "The woman is a prostitute, not a victim."
Another Kelly attorney, Ed Genson, made a similar point when he cross-examined prosecution witness Bennie Edwards Jr., another relative and a member of the alleged victim's music group.
Asked if the way the female acted in the video bore any resemblance to the alleged victim as he knew her, Edwards shook his head: "It's not her character at all."