Several rulings made as R&B star's case slowly advances

Friday yielded a mixed bag of rulings in the case of R&B star R. Kelly, who is facing 14 counts of child pornography stemming from a sex video authorities say he made with a teenage girl.

A prosecution witness will be allowed to testify as to the girl's age, Cook County Judge Vincent Gaughan ruled, but will not be able to talk about the typical behavior of sex abuse victims -- specifically, how they often deny the acts or wait a long time to talk.

Gaughan also scheduled a hearing to determine if still more testimony from Sharon Cooper, a pediatrician, will be allowed in court. At issue is Cooper's planned discussion of the vein patterns -- and whether the veins on the male's hands in the sex video match those on Kelly's hands in snapshots taken following his arrest.

The hearing will determine the scientific credibility of the vein identification process.

The hearing is Dec. 18.

Friday's rulings were the latest developments in a pre-trial process that has dragged on for years. In that time, Kelly has released five albums and a greatest hits collection and toured extensively.

The defense has argued against all three pieces of the Cooper testimony, saying, among other things, that jurors should be able to judge for themselves how old the girl is after seeing the video.

Gaughan voiced significant concerns over the testimony on typical sex abuse victim behavior, largely because of one key issue: The girl has said in sworn grand jury testimony that she was not the one in the sex videotape.

Should Cooper testify it's normal to deny such things, Gaughan said, she could in effect "be saying that perjury is a symptom of (sex) abuse."