In R. Kelly's fight for his freedom, he faces a straight-talking prosecutor whose life in some ways parallels his own.
Though the singer was dogged for decades by allegations he victimized women and girls, his fate only came into question after a documentary brought renewed public derision and charges were meted out by Kim Foxx, the state's attorney whose own story shares some similarities with the defendant.
They are both products of 1970s Chicago childhoods with absentee fathers and protective mothers who would later die prematurely of cancer. Two black Americans who said they suffered poverty and sexual assaults in their early years, who escaped public housing complexes to climb to positions of power in their respective fields. Two people whose stories diverged and brought them to opposite sides of a legal fight that could forever define them.
After Kelly's hearing Saturday , Foxx went before a phalanx of cameras, calmly reciting the graphic accusations . Her short, just-the-facts appearance, similar to one a day earlier, bared nothing about a woman who even a year ago said she saw more of herself in defendants than her fellow attorneys.
"I have more in common with the young people who come through our detention center than the attorneys who work for me," the 46-year-old Cook County state's attorney said last year in a talk at a suburban Chicago library, the (Arlington Heights) Daily Herald reported.
Foxx grew up in the notorious Cabrini-Green project. For a time as a teenager, her family was homeless, and as a young child, she said, she was sexually assaulted multiple times, by both a relative and some neighborhood boys. As a 6-year-old accompanying her mother to court for a child support hearing, she said she first dreamed of her eventual career as she was awed by attorneys who seemed to be champions for powerless little girls like her.
She eventually made it to Southern Illinois University for undergraduate and law degrees before working as an assistant public guardian representing child victims, an assistant state's attorney handling child protection cases and juvenile offenders, and as chief of staff for the president of the board of commissioners in Cook County, which includes Chicago.
Foxx invoked her powerful personal story repeatedly after she made an improbable bid to unseat a two-term incumbent, her former boss, for the top county prosecutor's job, three years ago. Days before sailing to victory in her primary, she told campaign staffers what it signified.
"As someone who came from a neighborhood like I did to be able to step into this moment right now where we can transform our criminal justice system and have the support of all of you, you have no idea how much that means," she said, according the Chicago Tribune.
The woman who as a child cowered in a bathtub when she heard gunfire was now standing beside luminaries such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, earning financial backing from billionaire George Soros and gaining attention from 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful and California Sen. Kamala Harris.
Foxx hasn't been without controversy, from a campaign finance violation that brought a hefty fine to overstatements of her trial experience that she later walked back and her announcement Thursday to recuse herself from the case of "Empire" actor Jussie Smolett . That decision raised the eyebrows of many, including the woman she unseated, Anita Alvarez, who mused "maybe I should have just recused myself from the difficult cases that came across my desk."
After the "Surviving R. Kelly" documentary series last month reignited interest in the purported crimes, Foxx pleaded for victims to come forward and proclaimed herself "sickened as a survivor ... sickened as a mother ... sickened as a prosecutor." Kelly claims to have been a childhood sexual assault victim himself.
Kenyette Tisha Barnes, co-founder of the #MuteRKelly campaign, said she took some satisfaction in seeing a woman of color prosecuting a case whose victims are women of color who have long been ignored. As cautiously optimistic Barnes is, she questions why it has taken authorities, including Foxx, so long.
"Lately, I think she has been pitch-perfect, I think she has used the power of her position to really drive these cases to this point. However, survivors have come forward to her prior to this and they have not had favorable interactions and I think that, to some degree, there has to be some accountability for that," Barnes said Saturday. "I really believe that these DAs have obfuscated their responsibility for too long and now they're doing damage control."
Foxx took no questions Saturday but has framed herself as a warrior shaped by her life story.
"I've deliberately chosen a career where I've worked with people who work on issues that deal with those who have the least among us," she once told the Tribune. "Because I've never shaken, never been able to shake the caste that I come from."
Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org or https://twitter.com/sedensky
WASHINGTON (AP) — Israel this week briefed Biden administration officials on a plan to evacuate Palestinian civilians ahead of a potential operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah aimed at rooting out Hamas militants, according to U.S. officials familiar with the talks.
The officials, who were not authorized to comment publicly and requested anonymity to speak about the sensitive exchange, said that the plan detailed by the Israelis did not change the U.S. administration’s view that moving forward with an operation in Rafah would put too many innocent Palestinian civilians at risk.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to carry out a military operation in Rafah despite warnings from President Joe Biden and other western officials that doing so would result in more civilian deaths and worsen an already dire humanitarian crisis.
The Biden administration has said there could be consequences for Israel should it move forward with the operation without a credible plan to safeguard civilians.
“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late Friday at the Sedona Forum, an event in Arizona hosted by the McCain Institute.
Some 1.5 million Palestinians have sheltered in the southern Gaza city as the territory has been ravaged by the war that began on Oct. 7 after Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages.
The United Nations humanitarian aid agency on Friday said that hundreds of thousands of people would be “at imminent risk of death” if Israel moves forward with the Rafah assault. The border city is a critical entry point for humanitarian aid and is filled with displaced Palestinians, many in densely packed tent camps.
The officials added that the evacuation plan that the Israelis briefed was not finalized and both sides agreed to keep discussing the matter.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Friday that no “comprehensive” plan for a potential Rafah operation has been revealed by the Israelis to the White House. The operation, however, has been discussed during recent calls between Biden and Netanyahu as well as during recent virtual talks with top Israeli and U.S. national security officials.
“We want to make sure that those conversations continue because it is important to protect those Palestinian lives — those innocent lives,” Jean-Pierre said.
The revelation of Israel's continued push to carry out a Rafah operation came as CIA director William Burns arrived Friday in Egypt, where negotiators are trying to seal a cease-fire accord between Israel and Hamas.
Hamas is considering the latest proposal for a cease-fire and hostage release put forward by U.S., Egyptian and Qatari mediators, who are looking to avert the Rafah operation.
They have publicly pressed Hamas to accept the terms of the deal that would lead to an extended cease-fire and an exchange of Israeli hostages taken captive on Oct. 7 and Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
Hamas has said it will send a delegation to Cairo in the coming days for further discussions on the offer, though it has not specified when.
Israel, and its allies, have sought to increase pressure on Hamas on the hostage negotiation. Signaling that Israel continues to move forward with its planning for a Rafah operation could be a tactic to nudge the militants to finalize the deal.
Netanyahu said earlier this week that Israeli forces would enter Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’ last stronghold, regardless of whether a truce-for-hostages deal is struck. His comments appeared to be meant to appease his nationalist governing partners, and it was not clear whether they would have any bearing on any emerging deal with Hamas.
Blinken visited the region, including Israel, this week and called the latest proposal “extraordinarily generous” and said “the time to act is now.”
In Arizona on Friday, Blinken repeated remarks he made earlier this week that "the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a cease-fire is Hamas.”
The Chahine family prepares to bury two adults and five boys and girls under the age of 16 after an overnight Israeli strike in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, Friday, May 3, 2024. An Israeli strike on the city of Rafah on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip killed several people, including children, hospital officials said Friday. (AP Photo/Ismael Abu Dayyah)
FILE - Palestinians line up for free food during the ongoing Israeli air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip in Rafah, Jan. 9, 2024. A top U.N. official said Friday, May 3, 2024, that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine" after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory. (AP Photo/Hatem Ali, File)
Palestinians rescue a woman survived after the Israeli bombardment on a residential building of Abu Alenan family in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, early Saturday, May 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Ismael Abu Dayyah)
President Joe Biden walks across the South Lawn of the White House as he talks with White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Thursday, May 2, 2024, in Washington, after returning from a trip to North Carolina. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
