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R Kelly out on bail
07/06/2002 07:45 - (SA)
Bartow - A Florida judge ruled that Grammy-winning rhythm and blues singer R Kelly could be freed on $750 000 bail on Thursday but barred the child pornography suspect from contact with unrelated minors.
Kelly was indicted in Chicago on charges of producing child pornography based on a videotape he allegedly made with an underage girl. He was arrested on Wednesday at the central Florida home he and his family had rented for several months.
At Kelly's initial court hearing on Thursday, Circuit Judge Karla Wright read the charges and agreed to let him out of jail on $750 000 bond.
"He's going to be booked out some time today," Polk County sheriff's spokesperson Kim Garrett said after the hearing.
Wright ordered Kelly to avoid contact with children unrelated to him by blood or marriage. Under the bail conditions she set, Kelly cannot leave Florida except in his attorney's custody and must check in with state authorities once a week until he returns to Chicago to answer the charges.
Kelly (35) whose first name is Robert, wore an orange jail jumpsuit and appeared sombre. He nodded and answered yes when the judge asked if he understood the terms of his bail, but did not speak otherwise.
The two-time Grammy Award winner issued a statement on Wednesday calling the charges unwarranted and saying he had "complete faith in our system of justice".
The 26-minute video allegedly showed him at his Chicago apartment having sex with an underage girl. He has called the videotape a fake and his lawyer said the girl on the tape was not a minor.
Child pornography
The indictment charged Kelly with 21 counts of videotaping, producing or soliciting for child pornography and he could face up to 15 years in prison if convicted.
Bootleg copies of the video have been sold on the streets nationwide for months and one was sent anonymously to the Chicago Sun-Times, which turned it over to police.
Kelly, whose lyrics range from the religious to "bump-and-grind" love songs, wrote the 1996 hit single I Believe I Can Fly for the movie Space Jam.
He has sold millions of records, topping the charts in 2000 with TP-2.Com. But his recent release with rapper Jay-Z, The Best of Both Worlds, has not been popular and Jay-Z refused to promote it because of the allegations against Kelly.
One of Chicago's top music stations pulled Kelly's music from its playlist on Thursday and an opinion poll showed wide support for more such action.
Kelly's hometown station WBBM-FM said it had a responsibility to uphold community standards.
The Chicago Sun-Times published a poll of 500 people who were asked if radio stations should continue to air his music. Fifty-six percent said no, 36 percent said his music should still be played and 8 percent were undecided.
WGCI-FM, a Chicago radio station with a large black audience, said it planned to continue playing Kelly's music, even though one black community activist urged advertisers to boycott the station until it took his music off the air.
A store chain in Chicago removed from its shelves an adult video, R. Kelly Bump&Grind - You Be the Judge, which purported to show him in a sexual romp with two women.
The store said the women were adults and neither was the girl on the video that triggered his indictment.
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South Africa
