Race, gender, celebrity play roles in R. Kelly porn trial

What if that girl used, abused and urinated upon as a sex toy in that graphic tape shown at the R. Kelly child pornography trial had been a 13-year-old, naïve, white girl from a sprawling mansion in Barrington Hills?

Would the 41-year-old millionaire music mogul still have been acquitted Friday the 13th on all 14 counts? Would he still have been free to thank Jesus and God for being allowed to continue a career that might soon include a song about this case? Would he still have been declared as not guilty as fellow celebrities Robert Blake and O.J. Simpson?

Or would Robert Kelly from the South Side of Chicago have been convicted of child pornography charges, and now be facing a 15-year prison sentence? Considering that the case has been lingering for more than six years, would he already have served his time?

What if the girl on the tape had been a mature and brilliant eighth-grader from Elgin with the mind of a college woman and the body of little girl?

What if the youngster in that tape had been a 13-year-old white boy who lives in a trailer park near O'Hare? Or the 13-year-old son of a prominent black politician?

And what if the alleged pornographer had been a white female, country singer instead of a black male R&B sensation? What if the suspect had been a 41-year-old, white, obese man who ran the cash register at some dirty book store and didn't have the best team of defense attorneys money could buy?

Or what if the accused had been a skinny, meek priest? Or a young gymnastics coach?

What if the girl on the tape was 16-years-and-364-days-old and the man was her boyfriend on his 17th birthday?

We like to think of justice as blind, children as children, and verdicts as black-and-white. But when verdicts concern children, there is a lot of gray in justice.

A prosecutor once told me that one of the most important factors in winning a guilty verdict wasn't the guilt of the accused, but the innocence of the victim. While prosecution witnesses testified that they identified the girl in that R. Kelly tape from a decade ago, that person, now a woman, denied it was her. She wasn't even called to testify. That's not a victim who leads to a conviction.

Society's attitude about children involved in crimes is puzzling. A 16-year-old having sex in a car with her 19-year-old boyfriend is a victim of statutory rape in some states and a woman engaging in consensual sex in another.

Our laws and prosecutors seek to protect young victims, portraying them as innocents who don't have the maturity to make judgments. But if a heinous crime is committed by a teenager, prosecutors often turn around and seek adult charges. Our laws allow kids who do adult things to be punished as if they were adults.

That's why children judged too young to vote, drink a beer, rent a car, buy cigarettes, hold full-time factory jobs or sign business contracts still can be sent to death row. Our nation has executed inmates for crimes they committed as teens.

Before any testimony had been given in the R. Kelly case, some of his fans outside the courtroom argued that the girl in the tape was built like an adult and engaged in adult behavior, so the courts shouldn't treat her like a child.

Nearby, a couple of African-American fathers with an Islamic group argued that the trial should end in a guilty verdict that would reinforce their desire to value and protect black children.

The jury has spoken. R. Kelly is not guilty.

But the child in that video still hasn't gotten justice.