"And then we go further: it's the black community. It's the producers, the promoters, the runners, the people in his camp who were more interested in being aligned with a superstar than actually protecting black girls. "Number two, it's the people who enabled it. But black girls in particular."įor Kelly, who last released a studio album in 2016, the guilty verdict in New York is not the end of his legal troubles he is facing further sex abuse charges brought in Illinois and Minnesota - to which he has also pleaded not guilty.Īnd thanks to this first trial in New York, the spotlight is now also firmly on those who at best turned a blind eye, at worst, enabled him.Ĭharging the singer with racketeering meant prosecutors set out to show him as the leader of "an enterprise" where "managers, bodyguards, drivers, personal assistants and runners" were all complicit in recruiting women and girls for sex with him.ĭeRogatis says there are others who should be facing charges and Barnes agrees that while Kelly was "at the top of the pyramid", there is still "a lot of blame to go around". They are simply not believed, and women in general are not believed about a sexual abuse story. And enough was just enough."ĭeRogatis agrees it was a "problem of race", saying: "What the 48 women whose stories I've told in the last 21 years have all said to me is that nobody matters less in America than young black girls. And I've watched the way the entertainment industry, our whole community, maligned these young women for years. "I was a black girl, I'm a black woman in this country. I started to hear about Aaliyah and the other young ladies, and they were always young black girls. "I was a big R Kelly fan many years ago, in the '90s. It has taken movements such as #MeToo and Time's Up, as well as #MuteRKelly, to get to this point, she says. Kenyette Tisha Barnes, the co-founder of the #MuteRKelly movement - launched in 2017 to make calls to boycott the singer's music and shows, and "hold accountable those who allowed this behaviour to go on for so long" - says the answer is simple: "Because these were young black girls from inner-city Chicago." But, you know, until Surviving R Kelly brought these women into people's living rooms in America, and they saw woman after woman after woman 12 different women appeared on camera, telling their stories. "There were police officers who valiantly tried to stop his predatory behaviour. But it was Surviving R Kelly that finally got people listening, he says. This was a cash machine for the music industry that was well aware of his behaviour and never actually acted to stop it."ĭeRogatis never stopped his reporting, helping to tell the stories of 48 different accusers over more than 20 years. "During that time, he's selling 100 million albums - of his own, and he produced for everyone from Whitney Houston and Celine Dion to Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber. He has now been sentenced to 30 years in prison for those crimes - but also faces another trial in Chicago in August. In the end, it was a documentary series, Surviving R Kelly, released in 2019, that became the catalyst for the singer's trial in New York in 2021, and ultimately led to him being found guilty of all nine charges brought against him - one charge of racketeering and eight counts of violating a law which prohibits transporting people across state lines for prostitution. The world wanted to hear his music, so his unknown accusers were easy to ignore. After years of delays to his trial, the singer was acquitted, but the allegations never went away.Ĭlaims made over the years were silenced and brushed over, by an industry that wanted to keep the money rolling in, and fans who did not want to believe Kelly could have committed the crimes he was accused of. And in 2002, Kelly was charged with 21 counts of making indecent images of children. The criminal details of his marriage to Aaliyah in 1994, when she was 15 and he was 27 - now detailed in open court, a former tour manager admitting he bribed an official to get a fake ID in order for the ceremony to go ahead - had always been a well-known secret.
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