Former hip-hop star R. Kelly, on trial in Chicago, Illinois, on charges of child pornography and sexually assaulting a minor, is said to have scared his alleged victims and their parents to death.
As the mother of a then fourteen-year-old girl testified on Monday, she had lied to judicial authorities about 20 years ago during investigations into the singer because she feared acts of revenge.
The anonymous witness and her husband had previously confronted R. Kelly, real name Robert Sylvester Kelly, after the alleged abuse of their daughter.
On R. Kelly's order, she then testified that she did not recognize her daughter in a sex tape with the fifty-five-year-old.
"We feared for our lives and felt intimidated," the witness admitted.
R. Kelly sent her family out of the country at the time.
Her daughter testified in Chicago federal court last week that she was molested hundreds of times by the I Believe I Can Fly singer when she was a minor.
He is said to have bought back various recordings of the alleged assaults that disappeared from R. Kelly's studio for six-figure sums.
If found guilty, the former hip-hop icon, who was sentenced to 30 years in New York at the end of June, faces more years in prison.