Newly released footage could bring down R. Kelly after he’s been accused of sexual impropriety for more than two decades.
Attorney Michael Avenatti, who perhaps is best known for his representation of adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against President Donald Trump, said he was given a VHS tape by his client that shows the singer engaging in multiple sex acts with a girl who makes reference to being 14 years old. Avenatti’s client used to work for Kelly and said he’s seen the girl in the footage several times.
Avenatti also revealed that he gave the tape to Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Fox nearly a week ago, and CNN has confirmed they’ve also seen the footage. Fox is the same prosecutor who held a press conference in early January 2019 after the documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly” aired and called for victims to come forward.
Meanwhile, the New Yorker reports that a law enforcement official in Cook County said Kelly would soon be arrested because of the new footage.
The tape is said to be a little over 42 minutes in length, and in two different scenes, it shows the singer engaged in sex acts with the girl in a living room, then in a bedroom. The girl refers to the singer as “daddy” throughout the tape, and she and Kelly can be heard saying she has a “14-year-old p—y,” the report states.
Kelly also asked the girl to urinate in the video, and he’s seen urinating on her afterward.
The fallen singer was accused of committing similar acts when different footage surfaced in 2002 that seemed to depict him having sex with another apparently underage girl. He was later arrested and charged with 21 counts of child pornography but acquitted at the end of a 2008 trial in which the girl and her parents failed to testify.
In the following years, more sexual impropriety claims followed the singer, and in 2018 he was accused of running a sex cult. And when “Surviving R. Kelly” aired in January of this year, the call to end Kelly’s career grew extremely loud, which eventually led to his record label RCA dropping him.
Kelly’s attorney Steve Greenberg has already issued a statement regarding the newly released footage and said they know nothing about it.
“We are unaware of any new information involving Mr. Kelly,” he stated. “We have not been contacted by anyone. We have not been informed about any new information by anyone, and we have not been contacted by law enforcement.”
In August of 1994, Kelly married the late singer Aaliyah when she was 15 years old and he was 27, but the marriage was annulled one year later by her parents.