BY ERIC HERMAN and KIM JANSSEN Staff Reporters

A woman testified today that the female who appears in a sex video is her best friend from childhood who was 13 or 14 at the time the tape was made - and that the man in the tape is R&B superstar R. Kelly.

Simha Jamison, 24, said she met Kelly at a gym called Hoops when she was 12. Her friend, the allegedly underage girl, was about six months younger and already knew Kelly, calling him "Godfather."

As time went on, Jamison and her friend would go to downtown Chicago to visit Kelly at his recording studio and hang out, Jamison said. Kelly would sometimes give the girl money - "depending on the situation and the reason she needed it, no less than a hundred, no more than $500."

Jamison said that one day when she was a junior in high school, she saw the sex tape at the house of friends. When she saw the girl who engages in sex with Kelly, "I thought she looked just like my best friend, [the alleged victim]" Jamison said.

She recognized the man on the tape as R. Kelly, she said.

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