R Kelly is reportedly going to be locked away for a very long time.
In 2021, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being found guilty of crimes like trafficking, racketeering.
Where Is R Kelly Locked Up?
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He was later sentenced to 20 years after being convicted of producing illegal video content with children, and for enticing minors to engage in inappropriate activities.
Since his arrest in 2019, R Kelly has been moved around quite a bit.
He started out at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, which is where Diddy is being held while he waits for his trial in May.
R Kelly was later moved to the MCC in Chicago where he supposedly experienced mistreatment that seriously affected his health.
In April 2023 he was transferred to the federal prison that he is currently locked up in, the Federal Correctional Center in Butner, North Carolina.
According to reports, where he is now is a little less harsh than the life he was living when he was being kept in Chicago.
It was there that he said that he really feared for his life.
R Kelly Claims Negligence
An article by VIBE revealed that while he was in Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, he felt that the medical staff there were being extremely negligent with him.
He made some dramatic statements about how they were treating him during an audio interview which RapHouseTV got a hold of.
While in prison, he reportedly had to have surgery in order to deal with some blood clots that he had in his leg.
He accused the medical team who operated on him of miscommunication issues, and of simply taking a guess at what was wrong with his leg.
They reportedly didn’t even give him an X-ray.
He said that medical professionals were not supposed to take a chance on something as serious as his condition.
R Kelly Said ‘… I’m Scared For My Life …’
R Kelly said: “That’s why I’m speaking out on this, because I’m scared for my life in that area. And who wouldn’t be. They treat animals better than that.”
He went on to claim that he almost lost his life, and he added that it wasn’t supposed to meet his end that way.
At one point in the interview, he asked listeners to consider what they would’ve done if it had been their child, father, mother or someone else that they loved.
He said that if someone like that was in his situation, those closest to them would’ve insisted that they go see a doctor to check them out.
R Kelly’s Lawyer Speaks Out About His Health Issues
R Kelly’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, also spoke out about the way that her client was being treated in prison.
She told ABC7 that it was not just because it was R. Kelly, she stated that every prison deserved medical attention and medical care.
She went on to add: “The MCC is required to address these things in a competent fashion.”
In April 2023, R Kelly was transferred from the MCC in Chicago to the FCI in Butner, N.C.
APnews was informed by a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons that the reason why inmates were transferred was private due to security and safety reasons.
But the outlet revealed that Jennifer was expecting the move to the medium-security facility to happen, though she hadn’t been informed when.
In a statement that she released around that time, Jennifer said that her client continued to suffer from health issues caused by medical negligence at the MCC Chicago.
She said: “We are hopeful that Butner will ensure that his medical needs are met.”
Jennifer also mentioned that her team had filed R Kelly’s brief in the Second Circuit which would challenge his ‘unjust conviction’ and 30 year sentence.
She finished by saying they had many fights ahead of them.
Consultant And Inmates Speak Out About Prison R. Kelly Is In
A Federal Prison consultant told WTVD that a lot of inmates favored the Butner facility over others because of its medical center.
Other prisoners who’ve done time there include Martha Stewart, Bernie Madoff, and Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
He said that one of the nice things about the Butner complexes was that they tended to be pretty soft facilities.
Every institution reportedly has a different kind of cultural level.
The consultant claimed that Butner was meant to be a pretty good place because they had a low level of violence.
And convicts who’d committed SA, informants, and LGBTQ inmates could stay there as opposed to some institutions where they would actually be attacked.
Some people have speculated that R Kelly might’ve pulled some strings or used his fortune to help him get transferred there so that he could feel safer and have better medical care.
R Kelly Attacked By Inmate
A report by CNN shared that R Kelly had been attacked in his cell by another prisoner when he was at the MCC in Chicago.
R Kelly’s attorneys filed documents which claimed that there was CCTV footage which proved that no one working at the prison tried to stop the beating immediately.
They said that nobody ‘raised a finger’ until his attacker was ‘well into beating’ him.
According to the documents, his lawyers made the allegation that the other inmate roamed a great distance within the MCC before carrying out that act, without any opposition.
They went on to say that It was undisputed that, as a result, their client had suffered significant physical and psychological injuries.
R. Kelly’s lawyer at the time, Michael Leonard, wrote that an unresolved issue remained as to whether MCC personnel encouraged, and then allowed, a beating of R Kelly to happen.
Why Was R Kelly Attacked By Prisoner Jeremiah?
In a court filing, the attacker, named Jeremiah Farmer, reportedly confessed that he’d physically beaten the disgraced entertainer in an attempt to shed media spotlight on his own case.
According to the prison employee who interrupted the beating, he’d previously met with Jeremiah in his office, when all of sudden the inmate got up and left the room.
The employee said that he saw Jeremiah go off into an ‘out of bounds’ section and that he heard a commotion coming from R Kelly’s cell not long after that.
When he later found Jeremiah harming his fellow inmate, he allegedly ordered him to ‘cease the assault’ and then used his pepper spray to end the attack.
According to a Youtube video by Grunge, there are reports that another reason why Jeremiah wanted to hurt R Kelly was because he’d become irritated by frequent prison lockdowns,
Which were supposedly the fault of R Kelly’s protesters who were demonstrating outside the building.
The video also alleged that R Kelly suffered from paranoia and insomnia because of the brutal incident, and that he was forever frightened that he could experience violence again.
R Kelly’s Daughter Joanne Speaks Out About Father
It seems that R Kelly is not being visited by his family while he sits behind bars.
PEOPLE reported on a 2024 documentary titled R Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey, where the singer’s family members opened up about how they felt about him.
His daughter Joanne Kelly said that the horrific allegations against her father changed her whole life.
She said: “Nobody wants to be the child of the father that is out here hurting women and children.”
She explained that her father knew exactly why they couldn’t have the relationship that they would have liked to have with him.
Joanne also admitted that when she was younger, her dad was her ‘everything.’
She went on to reveal that for a long time, she didn’t even want to believe that it happened. She didn’t know that, even if he was a bad person, that he would do something to her.
When talking about R Kelly’s conviction, she shared that it really felt like that 1 millisecond completely just changed her whole life.
Joanne Kelly Will Not Take ‘Son To Prison To Meet His Grandfather’
Joanne was pregnant during the filming of the documentary.
She said: “If my son asks questions, I’m going to be as truthful as possible. And I will not be taking my son to prison to meet his grandfather.”
R Kelly’s ex wife also features in the documentary, and she shared her opinion that just because someone isn’t a good husband, doesn’t mean they couldn’t be a good father.
But she claimed that R Kelly didn’t even try.
A report by the Guardian revealed that in 2024, R Kelly’s legal team tried to have his 2022 conviction appealed, because Illinois’s statute of limitations reportedly applied to his case.
However, the court’s ruling was that his 20-year prison sentence was to be upheld.
