Dark details about past sexual assault allegations against R. Kelly were brought to the light only a week after he released his latest LP, but instead of showing remorse for what happened, Kelly insists that someone is trying to keep him from reaching the top of his music career.
Other artists like Lil Wayne and Rick Ross were slammed for inappropriate lyrics and half-hearted apologies, yet R&B star Kelly is still getting fan support for his “Black Panties” LP even though he hasn’t addressed new details that have emerged about previous sexual assault allegations. In 2002, the singer was charged with child pornography for videotaping himself engaged in sexual acts with a minor; he was found not guilty in 2008. Other lawsuits were settled out of court.
When radio host Big Tigger asked him about allegations that surfaced in a recent article, Kelly didn’t offer an apology or even really address whether or not the report was true. Instead he went on a rant about how haters are trying to keep him from being successful.
“Well I feel like I got the football, man, I’m running towards the touchdown and stopping and looking back, mess around, I’ll get tackled,” Kelly said. “And I also want my fans and everybody out there to know that I really appreciate everybody’s support from the very beginning of my career. But as you know, when you get on top of anything, it’s very windy up there.”
The new article by The Village Voice exposed more details behind Kelly’s past and revealed that the tapes of Kelly’s alleged sexual assault contained much more graphic images than any media reported at the time.
The tapes are “not Tommy Lee/Pam Anderson, [Kim Kardashian sex tape] fun videos,” Jim DeRogatis, the journalist who broke the story about Kelly’s alleged sexual assault 15 years ago, told The Village Voice. “You watch the video for which he was indicted …He orders her to call him Daddy. He urinates in her mouth and instructs her at great length on how to position herself to receive his ‘gift.’”
DeRogatis goes on to claim, “It’s a rape that you’re watching. So we’re not talking about rock star misbehavior, which men or women can do. We’re talking about predatory behavior.”
The article also suggests that Kelly had dozens of victims and took extreme precautions to ensure that his predatory secret was kept under wraps.
“Their lives were ruined. Read the lawsuits,” DeRogatis said. “There was a young woman that he picked up on the evening of her prom…Impregnated her, paid for her abortion, had his goons drive her.”
He went on to say that Kelly wasn’t the only one having sex with the young girls. According to the piece, he would group the girls together and force them to have sex with one another.
According to DeRogatis, Kelly dumped one of the girls and turned the other cheek when she tried to kill herself by slitting her wrists.
He even refers to the 46-year-old singer as a “monster” and explained how today’s twisted society might have actually helped him get away with such actions.
“The saddest fact I’ve learned is: Nobody matters less to our society than young Black women,” DeRogatis said. “Nobody. They don’t have any complaint about the way they are treated. Kelly never misbehaved with a single white girl who sued him or that we know of. No, it was young Black girls and all of them settled. They settled because they felt they could get no justice whatsoever. They didn’t have a chance.”
When the alleged sexual assaults took place almost 15 years ago, DeRogatis was not only the first journalist to break the story but he was one of the only journalists who actually gave the allegations a substantial amount of coverage. Meanwhile, Kelly’s troubles became the butt of many jokes with little to no concern about how the jokes and Kelly parodies might make the alleged victims or Kelly feel.
The full report regarding the sexual assault allegations has been published by The Village Voice.“
