R. Kelly's former studio manager has told a Brooklyn courtroom that the singer allegedly blew up and docked his paycheck after finding out that a male Disney World tour guide was booked instead of a female one.
The 'I Believe I Can Fly' singer is on trial in New York after being charged with racketeering, sexual exploitation of a child, forced labor, kidnapping, enticement, and bribery. Kelly has denied the charges against him.
Now his former manager Tom Arnold, who worked for Kelly between 2004 and 2011, told jurors in testimony Thursday, August 26, that the R&B singer docked his entire paycheck when he couldn't get a female tour guide during a visit to Walt Disney World in Florida.
"It needed to be a woman," Arnold said in court, per Daily Mail. "His request was that it would be a female tour guide."
"I took the first person I could get," he said of the 2011 Disney World vacation. "It was a gentleman … Nobody was available."
He said the offending hiring decision cost him $1,500 in pay.
Kelly, who federal prosecutors said kept underage girls under strict and often brutal rules of conduct for years, allegedly beat and humiliated the young women for even minor breaches of his imposed rules.
At one point, Arnold said, staffers were punished for one such misstep. "We were all fined because someone ate his donuts," he testified, per Insider.
What's more, he said Kelly’s rules included a requirement that he flip up the rear-view mirror when he picked up a girl for the singer so he could not make eye contact with them.
Arnold said he began working for Kelly in 1998 at his Chicago studios.
Elsewhere in the courtroom, one of the singer's alleged victims accused Kelly of "purposely giving" her herpes during their alleged sexual relationship when she was just 17.
The latest accuser is one of six alleged victims who have retained their anonymity with the same alias: Jane Doe. Their alleged accounts of abuse by the singer have been recorded in an indictment from federal prosecutors in New York.
Take a look at this explosive interview with R. Kelly in the video below:As reported by Sky News, Jane Doe #5, who is now 23, was just 17 when she met the now-54-year-old performer, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly.
Jane Doe #5 said she had told Kelly she was 18 when they met, which is the age of consent in Florida. She had aspirations of a music career and hoped the accused could help her in that respect.
But when they met, he allegedly told her he needed to be satisfied sexually before she could audition for him.
Doe told the court: "I told him I did not come to please him, I came for an audition."
"I just wanted to sing," she added. "I genuinely wanted his input."
Following the initial encounter, which allegedly involved oral sex, the R&B performer was accused of having sex with the witness on several other occasions.
Jane Doe #5 testified that at one point during sex, the pain "got worse to the point where I couldn't walk".
After her sexual encounters with Kelly, she said she was diagnosed with herpes, and accused him of "purposely" giving her the disease.