Despite decades of sexual assault and abuse allegations — and proof of his inappropriate behaviour in some cases — top musicians have continued to work with R. Kelly. But after a six-part documentary aired on Lifetime, tolerance for his behaviour has finally reached a breaking point.
The documentary, called “Surviving R. Kelly,” outlines years of accusations of sexual abuse and coercion against the R&B singer, including alleged sex tapes with underage girls.
Since the documentary first aired, on Jan. 3, several of his previous collaborators have spoken out against — and even refused to work with — R. Kelly, who married the late singer Aaliyah when she was just 15 and he was 27.
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Most recently, his own estranged daughter called him a “monster” in an Instagram post.
We broke down what you need to know about Kelly’s comeuppance, his past, and what’s still unfolding.
What has R. Kelly done?
Kelly has a long history of alleged predatory and abusive behaviour toward women. To start, he falsified a marriage document when he married Aaliyah in 1994, saying she was 18. That same year, Kelly produced Aaliyah’s debut album, titled “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number.” Months later, the marriage was annulled. Kelly faced no charges over the incident.
Kelly’s affinity for underage girls apparently spanned many years. Back in 1996, the Chicago Sun-Times published an investigation in which an aspiring singer said Kelly “engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct” with her when she was 15 and he was 24.
Jim DeRogatis, a former Sun-Times reporter who’s covered Kelly’s behaviour since the 1990s, received two sex tapes from anonymous sources in 2001, one of which allegedly depicted sex between Kelly and a 14-year-old girl, where he infamously peed on her. The journalist turned the tapes over to police. As a result, Kelly was indicted on child pornography charges, although he was later found not guilty, in 2008.
Kelly also faced a series of lawsuits in 2001 and 2002 from women who claimed sexual misconduct from the singer. Two women sued Kelly for having sex with them while they were underage, one of whom said she was coerced into an abortion. Another claimed that he filmed them during sex without her consent.
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“I was coerced into receiving oral sex from a girl I did not want to have sex with,” one of the women claimed in a 2001 lawsuit. “I was often treated as his personal sex object and cast aside. He would tell me to come to his studio and have sex with him, then tell me to go. He often tried to control every aspect of my life, including who I would see and where I would go.”
Kelly settled all three lawsuits outside of court.
Kelly served as the lead songwriter and producer for Aaliyah’s 1994 debut album
As early as 2015, Kelly allegedly began wooing young women and separating them from their parents, according to a BuzzFeed News report written by DeRogatis, the same journalist who broke the story on Kelly in the Sun-Times in 1996.
Kelly calls the women his “babies,” and they’re allegedly required to call him “daddy.” The report also claimed that Kelly filmed his sexual encounters with the women, who were sometimes physically punished if they disobeyed him.
“You have to ask for food. You have to ask to go use the bathroom,” Cheryl Mack, who worked as Kelly’s personal assistant, told DeRogatis. Kelly “is a master at mind control …. He is a puppet master.”