R. Kelly Sentenced To 30 Years In Prison For Federal Racketeering And Sex Trafficking

R. Kelly, 55, has left a wake of victims across the country, and he is finally paying the price for his crimes. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York just issued a sentencing after he was convicted last year of federal racketeering and sex trafficking.

R. Kelly Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Federal Racketeering and Sex Trafficking

When District Court Judge Ann Donnelly read his sentence today of 30 years in federal prison, R. Kelly's victims held hands and prayed. "You left in your wake a trail of broken lives," Judge Donnelly said to Kelly. She said she considered the fact that Kelly experienced a traumatic childhood of his own, in which he was sexually abused by a family member as well as a landlord.

"It may explain, at least in part, what led to your behavior," the judge said. "It most surely is not an excuse."

Last September, Kelly was convicted on nine counts, including one charge of racketeering and eight counts of violating a sex trafficking law called the Mann Act. Prosecutors accused Kelly of using a "network of people at his disposal to target girls, boys and young women for his own sexual gratification."

"He accepts that he is a flawed individual," Kelly's lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said. "But he is not this one-dimensional monster that the government has portrayed and the media has portrayed."

"We were prepared for it," Bonjean said after the sentencing. "We are now prepared to fight this appeal."