R. Kelly ordered to pay over $500K in his music royalties to compensate his victims

R&B singer R. Kelly will be dipping into his music royalties to pay up.

On Aug. 23, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly ordered the convicted sex offender and his longtime music publisher Universal Music Group to pay over $500,000 in music royalties to cover fines that R. Kelly still owes, reports Bloomberg Law. Previously, Donnelly had also ordered the singer to pay almost $28,000 in his prison inmate account to cover his unpaid fines.

R. Kelly is currently serving 30 years in prison for his 2021 conviction when he was found guilty of nine counts of sex trafficking and racketeering. The six-week trial was rife with bombshell testimonies, stories and allegations from young women who claim to have survived sexual abuse, imprisonment and even reproductive coercion from the singer. 

For years, many of these claims went ignored. Some have attributed the momentum of his trial and conviction to the influence of the 2019 Lifetime documentary, "Surviving R. Kelly." In the docuseries dozens of women interviewed claimed to have survived abuse from the now disgraced singer over the decades, eventually leading to Kelly facing criminal charges.