As R. Kelly faces trial for sex trafficking and other heinous sex crimes he has committed over the past three decades, the rapper's illegal 1994 marriage to the late popstar Aaliyah has been resurfaced for further scrutiny on Wednesday, Sept. 1, after the minister who officiated the marriage testified in court.
Nathan Edmund, a 73-year-old man, testified in the trial against R. Kelly and spoke about the embattled musician's 1994 marriage to an underage Aaliyah Haughton as a way for the prosecutors to establish a timeline for the assault of another victim of Kelly, who was 17 at the time, according to the Source.
“A friend of Mr. Kelly’s, who was also a friend and associate of mine, asked me to do him a favor,” Edmund told the court about how he ended up officiating the marriage between the two singers.
Kelly’s defense team attempted to block all talk and testimony about his illegal marriage to Aaliyah by saying that the "Rock the Boat" singer herself cannot speak to the truth about the marriage, as well as to allegations that she was pregnant at the time, the Daily Beast reported.
Nevertheless, the unlawful marriage is being explored in court.
Kelly was in the middle of a tour at the time with Aaliyah, whom Kelly helped launch by producing and writing the songs in her 1994 debut album "Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number."
Demetrius Smith, the former tour manager of R. Kelly, said that he helped obtain a counterfeit welfare card for Aaliyah so that they could fake her age on the marriage license. Aaliyah, who was just 15 years old at the time, was listed as 18 on the marriage certificate.
Kelly and Smith were reportedly on an airplane flying from Orlando to Chicago at the time, when he talked about his fear of going to jail if Aaliyah was really pregnant while being an underage teen. Smith admits that he never believed that Aaliyah was bearing a child.
Keith Williams, a friend of Kelly, attempted to look for a minister to officiate the marriage and found Edmund, who he knew from the fact that they both worked at real estate. They attempted to get Edmund to sign an NDA, but he refused after reading it, Buzzfeed News reported.
“I looked at it, I read it, then I kind of chuckled,” Edmund told the court. “And said it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.”
A few days after the marriage, a woman named Addie, who was 17 at the time, recalled that she was assaulted by R. Kelly, who mounted unprotected sexual acts to her after a concert.
“I was in complete shock. I was just very introverted and shy and I didn’t know what to say at all,” Addie told the court. “I just went blank.”
R. Kelly’s marriage to Aaliyah was annulled by her parents in February 1995.
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