Judge to rule on whether cameras will be allowed in R. Kelly sex case

The judge presiding over R. Kelly’s sex abuse cases will weigh in Friday on whether or not to allow cameras in the courtroom.

Cameras in the courtroom have become the norm for high-profile cases in the Cook County courts in the years since the system began a pilot program in in 2014, although individual judges have authority to set rules for the coverage in their courtroom, if media outlets request access.

Judges generally will limit whether certain witnesses can be filmed or photographed, and one of Kelly’s alleged victims already has asked Judge Lawrence Flood to bar the media from recording her if she ever appears in court. Judges typically grant such request for victims or witnesses they deem to be vulnerable.

The woman, identified in court paperwork as “H.W.,” met Kelly in 1998, when the R&B star’s manager approached her at a restaurant where she was celebrating her 16th birthday with family, according to prosecutors. Though the woman’s mother told the manager that her daughter was just 16, and took the business card with Kelly’s phone number, the girl later found the number, called Kelly, and allegedly had sexual encounters with the singer several times over a span about a year.

The same woman has filed a civil lawsuit against Kelly in Cook County, alleging she was a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of the singer, and her complaint adds some detail the account related by prosecutors at Kelly’s bond hearing last month.

In the civil complaint, the woman said that she was walking down a Chicago sidewalk in May 1998 when Kelly pulled up alongside her in his car and talked with her briefly. An “associate” of Kelly met the girl and her family at a restaurant, and gave her Kelly’s number, saying the star wanted her to come to his studio to shoot a music video. The lawsuit states that the woman “broke through her repressed memory and became conscious of her sexual activity” with Kelly when talking with a therapist in 2015.

In her handwritten request to Flood, H.W. wrote that the the presence of cameras in the courtroom will “trigger” her and make it more difficult for her to testify. She also notes that Kelly’s defense team has “attempted to publicly shame” victims in his criminal cases.

“I have no interest in being a media spectacle,” she wrote.

There were no cameras allowed in Cook County courtrooms when Kelly went to trial on child pornography charges in 2008, a blockbuster case that took six years to go to trial.

Cameras were present for the pre-trial hearings and trial of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke.