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I don't even know where to begin with this story, other than to suggest that if you're eating and don't have a strong stomach, you may want to come back to this one later.
For years, we've been talking about R Kelly's dysfunction. His predatory and most likely illegal dating and sexual habits, his definitely illegal marriage, his pedophila. We wrote about the Village Voice piece in where R Kelly's decades-long history of abuse was unearthed for the world to see. It was also the place where Jim DeRogatis said poignantly, "Nobody Matters Less To Our Society Than Young Black Women."
Last year, we outlined the highlights from the GQ piece where Kelly spoke about his own sexual abuse as a child but defended Bill Cosby against mounting allegations.
We've spoken publicly about his sickness on episodes of "Did Y'all See?" much to the chagrin of some of our viewers.
Still, as much research as I've done on R Kelly, nothing could have prepared me for what I read in the BuzzFeed article that is currently searing the discussion on the internet.
In a phrase, it's about parents who are trying everything in their power to get their children, their daughters, released from what they describe as R Kelly's abusive cult.
It's written by Jim DeRogatis, the Chicago reporter who has been following the R Kelly and his dysfunction for decades now and famously wrote the piece in The Village Voice I mentioned earlier.
It starts the perspective of parents, because as you'll soon see, they're the only ones who can speak rationally for and about their children these days.
"Backstage at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California, on May 23, 2015, J. was thrilled that her 19-year-old daughter’s music career was going to make a major leap forward from recording demos and performing at talent shows to the chance of stardom — thanks to the help of an R&B superstar.
“When we got to go backstage with R. Kelly, we stayed there over two hours,” said J. “One-on-one with just me and my daughter and him. We went back to talk about the music. He listened to her CD. He was going to help her with her CD, and I was really impressed with him at first, because I have always been an R. Kelly fan.”
J. admitted that she'd heard about the sexual allegations that had followed R. Kelly's name for years. But she was confident in the type of mother she is, one who is fiercely protective and devoted to helping her child achieve her dream. Both she and her husband of 22 years moved from Memphis to Atlanta to give her daughter a better chance in the music industry.
She was sure she would be able to protect her.
“In the back of our minds, we were thinking [my daughter] could be around him if I was with her,” J. said. “It didn’t really hit home. Even with the Aaliyah situation, now that I think about it, ‘Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number’ ... but you don’t think about that. You grew up with the song, and you like the song.”
Now, J. and Tim are desperately trying to get their daughter to come back home. Since 2015, J. has quit her job and become an amateur detective, sharing her findings with the police and FBI, in an attempt to save her daughter. Despite all of this, nothing has changed because technically, J's daughter is not the victim or a kidnapping. She's not being held against her will. Instead, she lives with R Kelly willingly.
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Not only are the parents of this particular girl speaking out, three people who used to work closely with R Kelly, in his "inner circle" cosigned J's claims.
Cheryl Mack, Kitti Jones, and Asante McGee told DeRogatis that R Kelly has six women living on his properties in Chicago and Atlanta. And he controls every aspect of their lives, inlcuding what they eat, how they dress, when they bathe, when they sleep and how they engage in sexual encounters, which he records.
When J. saw to her daughter last, on December 1, 2016, she said she was not like herself.
“It was as if she was brainwashed. [She] looked like a prisoner — it was horrible,” she said. “I hugged her and hugged her. But she just kept saying she’s in love and [Kelly] is the one who cares for her. I don’t know what to do. I hope that if I get her back, I can get her treatment for victims of cults. They can reprogram her. But I wish I could have stopped it from happening.”
Since that day in December, J. and her husband have only received two text messages from their child.
One on Christmas: “I hate Christmas has to be this way this year.”and another for Mother's Day: “Happy Mother’s Day from me and Rob.”
Cheryl Mack, who worked as R Kelly's personal assistant for a year and a half in 2013 said the women believe that living with R Kelly will come with all types of perks and benefits.
“This is R. Kelly, I’m going to live a lavish lifestyle. No. You have to ask for food. You have to ask to go use the bathroom. … [Kelly] is a master at mind control. ... He is a puppet master.”
The other women, Jones and McGee said that during their time working for R Kelly, they also maintained a sexual relationship with him over the past five years before leaving. They too said that
R Kelly controlled their phones, use of social media and during their time living with him, they were not allowed to take pictures with him or photos of the rooms in which they were living. The women who are living there now, have to follow similar rules.
They outlined the women in his residences.
- A 31-year-old “den mother” who “trained” newcomers on how Kelly liked to be pleasured sexually. She had been best friends since high school with the girl in the videotape for which Kelly was tried in 2008. She recently parted ways with Kelly, these sources say. - A 25-year-old woman who also has been part of Kelly’s scene for seven years. - A recent arrival, a 19-year-old model who has been photographed in public with Kelly and named on music gossip websites — a rarity among the women in his circle. - An Atlanta songwriter who began her relationship with Kelly around 2009, when she was 19. (She is now 26.) - And an 18-year-old singer from Polk County, Florida. Mack said the Florida singer is Kelly’s “favorite — his number-one girl.”Technically all of the women living in Kelly's houses are past the age of consent, it's 17 years old in Illinois and 16 in Georgia. The former employees say that Kelly calls these women his "babies" and they are required to call him "Daddy." They must ask permission to leave the recording studio to return to their assigned room in the guest house. The videos he records of their sexual encounters, he shares with his male friends. The women are also made to dress in jogging suits so their figures will not be exposed when they're around other men. Mack, the personal assistant, recalls R Kelly making the girls, in jogging suits, turn around and face the corner while other men were present because he didn't want the other men to look at them. There are rules, living with R Kelly. And if you violate any of them, there is verbal or physical punishment. Jones, who was once sexually involved with Kelly, remembers a time in 2013 when he held her against a tree and slapped her because she was too friendly with a male cashier in Subway. McGee said she never saw Kelly hit anyone but did acknowledge that he was running a cult and that he manipulated her sexually and emotionally. She said, “R. Kelly is the sweetest person you will ever want to meet,” McGee said. “But Robert is the devil.” Jones said she's come forward now with the hope that she can prevent someone else from making the same mistakes she once made. "I got trapped. I had people telling me I was an idiot. But it took me a long time to realize they were right, and I'm talking now because I hope I can help some of these other girls." J., the mother of the child she hasn't seen since last December described how R Kelly lured her daughter away from her. “As far as I know, we weren’t talking to [Kelly] anymore,” J. said. “Or at least I wasn’t talking to him anymore.” But in June of 2015, their daughter lied to them about taking a trip to visit a college campus. Instead, Mack arranged for her to fly to Oklahoma City where Kelly was performing in a show. After that show, J's daughter told her parents and two other friends that this was the first time she had sex with Kelly. After months, J's daughter got frustrated with Kelly, noticing that every time she tried to discuss her music career, he'd redirect the conversation to something sexual. In a recorded conversation, later given to BuzzFeed, you can hear J's daughter ask about a particular song. But R Kelly redirects. "I miss my baby." Then he asks her what she's wearing. After she responded he gives her instruction, "I want you to get in the habit of telling me what color panties you got on everyday." J.'s daughter enrolled in college, living in the dorms. At first, her roommate, who is only identified by her initials T.S., says that at first she didn't believe her friend knew R Kelly. But eventually, she started playing their sexually explicit conversations out on speaker phone. T.S. says that one time her friend told her that once R Kelly sent a cab to pick her and a group of women up and take them to the club. During the ride over, the cab driver told a joke and J's daughter laughed. One of the other women texted R Kelly about the violation of his rules and when they arrived at the club, T.S. said, Kelly “bent her over and he whupped her behind because she laughed at the cab driver, who happened to be a man.” By the middle of the semester, J's daughter lost weight, colored her hair and cut it short because that was the way R Kelly said he liked it. By December J's daughter was skipping classes, did not show up for finals and when her parents called her counselors, they confirmed that she was no longer in good standing at the school. Long before then though, she had already been ignoring calls from her parents, forwarding all of J's calls to voicemail. They began calling the phone gave their daughter after she violated one of Kelly's rules to text them that she was ok. Later, they said that Kelly himself came to the phone to confirm that everything was ok. J and Tim tried to file a missing persons report with the campus police but once they revealed that they knew she was with Kelly, the case was dropped because their daughter wasn't actually missing. They knew where she was and as an adult there was nothing they could do about it. Later in December 2016, they had police in R Kelly's area do a well-being check on their daughter. But when they arrived at R Kelly's guest house, the place had been cleared and no one was there. When police in Chicago did the same thing, their daughter told police that she was "fine and did not want to be bothered with her parents because her father was threatening people." J's daughter keeps in touch with her grandmother, who she calls Nana. She reiterated that she was in a consensual relationship with Kelly and she was upset with her parents for intervening. She told her grandmother that she believed they were trying to ruin Kelly's career. But in spite of her granddaughter's claims, Nana said if she had the chance to talk to R Kelly, she'd say, “I would tell R. Kelly to send my granddaughter home. He knows it’s not right and he would not want anybody doing this to his daughter.” Tim and J have been in contact with the FBI. While the bureau can't confirm or deny an investigation into any one person, the parents are hopeful they will be able to intervene. Tim said, “It’s not about my daughter, per se. It’s about all the girls,” Tim said. “It’s about my daughter, and I understand that. But the abuse that my daughter is actually enduring, nobody should go through.”
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In addition to J and Tim, there is another parent, who is going by the name Theresa, says that she allowed her daughter to spend time around R Kelly because she believed it could lead to a music career. She says it's a decision she now regrets.
“My thing was I trusted. I have never been in the music industry before, ever,” Theresa said. “He is a lyrical genius — he is R. Kelly! And the fact is he went to court, he was never found guilty — he was acquitted — and we were led to believe there was no truth in it. Now I got all of these people asking about why my daughter is there, telling me, ‘All of that, the charges against Kelly, was true.’ Well, how come you didn’t tell me that before?”
She said her daughter was plucked out of the crowd during his Funk Fest show in Orlando.
Afterward, a member of his entourage gave her his number. At first her outreach went unrecognized. But eventually her texted her back.
Like J's daughter, Theresa's daughter built her relationship with R Kelly over text and the phone, conversations her parents didn't know about. Things came to the light when they received a text from their daughter saying that she met up with R Kelly at his hotel room.
They rushed over to the hotel and while their daughter did eventually come down, R Kelly refused to speak to them. Afterward, the girl was only supposed to speak to him when one of her parents was around.
“We needed to make sure it was about music, because he was going to mentor her,” she said. “And then from there he wanted her to travel with him so she could see how the music game really was. ... We thought it could be an opportunity, and that she was going to be with a guardian — a female guardian that would keep an eye on her.”
It wasn't long before she was living with R Kelly. They would get text messages occasionally saying that she was alright. They are no longer receiving those.
McGee said that Kelly is obsessed with this young lady and she is "head over heels" for him.
McGee said watching their dynamic, she realized something was not right.
“I have a 17-year-old daughter myself,” she said. “When I saw [the Florida singer] with him, it took me back. This could be my daughter. I just knew that it was not right and I just couldn’t understand what a man almost 50 is doing having sex with someone the same age as his daughter. That’s when I realized it was more of a mind-control thing.”
The young, Florida woman also found herself being punished after she violated one of R Kelly's rules.
“He left [the Florida woman] on the [tour] bus for, like, three days and she was not allowed to come out,” McGee said. “He said she didn’t do her homework — that’s why she was punished — which was very confusing, because she had just graduated [high school] over the summer.”
Theresa said that she fears even her daughter's relationship with Kelly ends, she won't get her daughter back.
“I desperately want my daughter back but I’m not [sure] what will [be] the repercussions if she doesn’t come willingly,” Theresa said. “These girls think this man loves them. Matters of the heart are a touchy subject.”
DeRogatis mentions that Theresa's daughters' story sounds similar to another young girl, an aspiring singer, who began a sexual relationship with R Kelly. She met him when he came to lecture her choir class. She started having sex with him in 1991, when she was 15 and he was 24. The relationship ended three years later. Afterward, the young lady attempted to take her life by slitting her wrists.
Theresa's daughter's older sister has visited Kelly's studio in Chicago in an attempt to rescue her sister. She left the scene being pushed and shoved by security and even being hit in the face.
She's pressed charges but no one has been arrested. The investigation had been suspended.
After the Theresa's daughter had been contacted and asked to comment on this story, she called her father and invited him to a concert in Indiana. Skeptical of Kelly's motivations, he declined the invitation. During that phone call he also learned that Kelly recently paid for her to have breast enhancement surgery.
“I am beyond furious,” Angelo said. “I said to her, ‘How could you do this? What the hell were you thinking? What if you died on the operating table?’ I don’t even know what we can do anymore. I just know we got to get her home."
Eventually, Linda Mensch, a civil lawyer in Chicago who represents Kelly, responded to DeRogatis with this written statement.
“We can only wonder why folks would persist in defaming a great artist who loves his fans, works 24/7, and takes care of all of the people in his life. He works hard to become the best person and artist he can be. It is interesting that stories and tales debunked many years ago turn up when his goal is to stop the violence; put down the guns; and embrace peace and love. I suppose that is the price of fame. Like all of us, Mr. Kelly deserves a personal life. Please respect that.”
It would be easy to read this story and blame it on "money-hungry" "fame-driven" parents. But they're just a symptom of a much larger problem. For those who aren't entrenched in media, who aren't taking the time to dig and read. For those of us who prefer to separate the artist from his personal life, who will still attend a concert or buy a song or CD, there is a reason why these parents viewed R Kelly as a mentor instead of a monster. The man is touring the country, selling out shows. He performs on networks that cater to women (Centric). He receives the cosign of some of our favorite fellow singers...women. (Erykah Badu.) Groups made up of young women (June's Diary) travel on tour with him. As a parent, not entirely well versed on the legal issues, the personal lives of these stars, you try to do anything to get your child to achieve their dream. We, Black folk particularly, defend him and his talent because he's made music we can step to because he's Black and a man, a Black man who's made it. And if Black men protect and defend their own, Black women go even harder. These parents aren't the main problem here. Society's inability to believe women, even with video evidence, is the problem. Society's, the Black community and even Black women's own lack of care and concern for ourselves and our interests caused this. Read the full story over at BuzzFeed.
The post Parents Claim R Kelly Has Their Daughters Trapped In An Abusive Cult appeared first on MadameNoire.