20 months for victims of harassment

As R. Kelly languishes in prison, preparing to appeal his conviction for various sex crimes, the men and women who helped him off the hook for more than two decades face their own consequences. According rolling stoneDonnell Russell, who describes himself as Kelly’s manager, was sentenced to 20 months in prison at a hearing on Thursday, November 17 for stalking and harassing one of the singer’s victims in an attempt to get him to change his testimony against him.
Russell had already pleaded guilty to those charges in July, after also being found guilty of making terrorist threats against a screening of Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly series. According to the Justice Department, Russell sent emails and text messages and made phone calls threatening the unnamed victim with explicit photos of her unless she dropped her case against R. Kelly. “Unplug the outlet or you will be exposed,” he wrote in a text. He then posted these photos on a Facebook page as Surviving R. Kelly broadcast.
Meanwhile, another R. Kelly associate, Michael Williams, was sentenced last year to eight years in prison for arson and witness intimidation after setting another woman’s car on fire. Kelly himself was convicted of child pornography in a second trial in Chicago after being convicted of sex trafficking in New York last year.