R. Kelly

In 2000, Chicago journalist Jim DeRogatis broke further accusations of Kelly having had sex with underage girls. He kept on the story for years, uncovering even ...

And I think it’s going to be the same in August when the second federal trial starts, because those videotapes, as I’ve heard from my sources, are just beyond horrifying. I think after my reporting for Buzzfeed in 2017 about the cult, and the #MuteRKelly movement being inspired to launch because of that story, that leads to Surviving R. Kelly and having these women in your living room, one after another, tell their stories as they did to me for 22 years in conference rooms and in meetings where it was just us. To be clear, all of those women, they never said, “I hate that evil monster.” What I heard again and again was, “The brother needs help. In all of the years I’ve covered this, I thought I’d heard everything, but there were still victims who testified, including the two young men—I had never heard those stories. I don’t say “allegedly,” because it has now been proved in a court of law in front of a jury of his peers, and he’s going to spend the rest of his life in prison. We’ve seen something similar with the misinformation around the Depp-Heard trial, and how a lot of the same people fueling that are now trying to downplay the Marilyn Manson allegations as well. The problems of race and the problems of treating women equitably and without abuse are deep. But there is a deep strain of racism and misogyny in this country, and that’s what we’re seeing come out in these people. Nobody [in the industry] has ever been accused of that many crimes that were proved in a court of law, and it truly is singular. Nobody in the history of popular music has ever been convicted in all of pop music history of charges of the breadth and depth of Robert Sylvester Kelly’s. He had a song, “The World’s Greatest,” to which I would only append “The World’s Greatest Predator,” at least in pop music. I think that the breadth and depth of the evidence that the team of several dozen federal investigators compiled for these two federal cases far outshines the technicality on which Cosby and his verdict was overturned. I haven’t gotten to talk in enough detail about this, but every system in Chicago failed these young Black girls, for 30 years, in the full glare of the brightest spotlight imaginable for a superstar who was selling 100 million records, generating $1 billion in income for Jive Records, and then RCA, and then Sony, with half a billion dollars going into his own pocket.

R&B singer and songwriter R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison after being convicted of nine counts of federal racketeering and sex ...

In 2018, DeRogatis reported that Kelly was being accused of running a cult by the parents of a young woman living at his home. If it weren’t for their fortitude and their insistence that justice be done, Kelly would still be seeking new girls to harm. Black women sharing, in their own words, what Kelly had done to them did something that nothing else could: It made people more empathetic to their plight. Three years before his acquittal in that sex-tape case, a 2005 episode of Cartoon Network’s “ The Boondocks” predicted he wouldn’t be convicted with an episode about R. Kelly standing trial for urinating on an underage girl. That’s when Oronike Odeleye and Kenyette Barnes created the #MuteRKelly movement to encourage a boycott of Kelly’s music. But the girl who prosecutors say was in the video refused to testify, and Kelly was found not guilty in 2008. When I wrote about it, tweeted about it and even spoke with my family about it, I was met with escalating hostility that eventually resulted in my being doxxed. He broke the news of the sex tape that prosecutors said showed the singer performing sex acts on a teenage girl and led to Kelly being charged in 2003 with 14 counts of child pornography. Some of those survivors held hands and prayed during his sentencing, showing Kelly that while he harmed those girls, they’re now women whom he couldn’t break. “There wasn’t a day in my life up until this moment that I actually believed that the judicial system would come through for Black and brown girls. It's because Black women — including Kelly’s former background singer Sparkle, journalist Jamilah Lemieux, writer Mikki Kendall, filmmaker dream hampton and activist Tarana Burke, to name a few — continued to sound the alarm, even when it was costly and dangerous to do so. Kelly used his fame and wealth to lure underage girls into his orbit, isolate them from their families and control and abuse them.

'Surviving R. Kelly' Producers and Survivor Lisa Van Allen on 30-Year Sentencing: 'This Is Just the Beginning' (EXCLUSIVE). By Elizabeth ...

She then entered into a complicated relationship with him, and was part of a sex tape that she said she was coerced into when appearing in “Surviving R. Kelly.” Years and years and numerous allegations later, the tables began to turn after he was subject of Lifetime’s “ Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired in January 2019. “It brings me nothing but joy to know that I am, and will continue, to be part of the solution. Shortly after the docuseries aired, R. Kelly was dropped by his label, and the following month, he was formally charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse. Van Allen first met the singer on the set of a music video when she was a minor. Van Allen was the star witness in 2008 when R. Kelly was in court for child pornography. Following the Lifetime docuseries, R. Kelly then sat down for an infamously uncomfortable interview with CBS News’ Gayle King, which catapulted his shocking story even further into the mainstream limelight to the point where it could no longer be ignored, as it had been for so long. I do it for anyone who feels voiceless — know that you are not alone. “Surviving R. Kelly” attracted high praise from critics and garnered large viewership as Lifetime’s top program at the time. In 2002, R. Kelly was indicted on 21 counts of making child pornography, but was acquitted. This week, R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison. The docuseries put his victims on-camera to detail the sexual abuse they claimed they endured at the hands of the singer.