R. Kelly, the R&B singer known for his outlandish, sometimes criminal behavior, is again embroiled in controversy. On Monday, BuzzFeed News reported that the 50-year-old is manipulating a group of young women, controlling everyday aspects of their lives as they stay at one of his properties, apparently by their own free will.

The report features testimony from the parents of some of these women, as well as three former members of Kelly’s entourage who corroborated the details. After luring young, attractive women into his inner circle by inviting them backstage and flying them out to concerts, Kelly would convince them to live in one of his properties in Atlanta or Chicago.

“Puppet Master”

According to the report, Kelly “controls every aspect of their lives: dictating what they eat, how they dress, when they bathe, when they sleep, and how they engage in sexual encounters that he records.” 

The famous artist, who recorded “I Believe I Can Fly” for the Space Jam soundtrack, purportedly uses his lavish lifestyle to attract women before using his verbal skills to convince them to stay with him, according to Cheryl Mack, Kelly’s former personal assistant.

“[Kelly] is a master at mind control. … He is a puppet master,” Mack told BuzzFeed.

One issue with police intervention is that the law allows consenting adults to participate in any relationship they wish, even when it is nontraditional. So when police in Illinois and Georgia performed welfare checks over the past year, no charges were filed. Instead, one 19-year-old aspiring singer staying at Kelly’s mansion in Atlanta, told authorities that she was “fine and did not want to be bothered.”

Some of the parents have spoken with FBI detectives but the bureau could not comment on the investigation to the public.

Mack, along with other former entourage members, said they wish they had documentation to prove their claims. They said Kelly controlled their cell phone usage and barred them from taking pictures of him or his homes. Kelly reportedly has the women call him “Daddy” while he calls them “babies.” He also has them request permission to contact other people besides himself.

For example, the parents of the 19-year-old singer, who last saw their daughter on Dec. 1, 2016, have only received two texts from their daughter since then. The first, sent on Christmas Day said, “I hate Christmas has to be this way this year.” The other came on Mother’s Day: “Happy Mother’s Day from me and Rob,” it said, referring to Kelly’s given name of Robert.

Kelly’s lawyer, Linda Mensch, defended her client’s actions and asked for privacy when BuzzFeed approached her with the allegations. In an email to BuzzFeed, she wrote:

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.

Criminal Past

Kelly is no stranger to criminal activity and sexual misconduct. In addition to being charged with assault and battery multiple times, Kelly has been accused of sexual relations with underage girls. He settled a dozen or more cases outside of court.

Here is one example of his clear indifference to age-related consent laws:

R Kelly said this but we still bumped “I Believe I Can Fly” at every Kindergarten graduation

pic.twitter.com/O9hlzbmclc

— (@Dr_Sweets23) July 17, 2017

Kelly is perhaps most infamous for a 2002 video which featured him having sex with, and urinating on, an underage girl. During a raid on his property, police found images of the girl on a camera hidden inside Kelly’s duffle bag. Since those images were ruled ineligible in court, Kelly was ultimately found not guilty on 14 child pornography charges. But the stain on his fame and public perception has never disappeared.

And while it’s not criminal, Kelly created the 33-part, 133-minute music video series titled “Trapped in the Closet,” which features a cheating husband, a bisexual pastor, and plenty of gun violence.

“Robert is the Devil”

According to Kelly’s former partners, the women staying at Kelly’s home, or in his Chicago recording studio last summer, include a songwriter, a singer, and a model. There is also a woman known as the “den mother” who teaches newcomers “how Kelly liked to be pleasured sexually,” according to BuzzFeed. All of the women are between the ages of 18 to 31.

Kelly reportedly keeps a black SUV stationed outside each of his properties with a “burly driver” to keep a watchful eye. This is just part of the psychological warfare Kelly wages against his “babies.”

Kelly makes the women wear jogging suits to minimize their attractiveness to other men, Mack said. If the women break one of his rules, Kelly is known to physically and emotionally abuse the women, according to Mack and fellow insider Kitti Jones. Jones said Kelly once pushed her against a tree and slapped her after she was too friendly with a male cashier at a Subway sandwich shop.

“R. Kelly is the sweetest person you will ever want to meet,” Asante McGee, another former Kelly insider said. “But Robert is the devil.”

Kelly wasn’t perceived positively by the public even before this report, but these allegations carry new weight. Every few years Kelly seems to get himself into legal trouble, so this is no surprise, but it is a horrifying portrait of a formerly well-liked artist.

Josh Schmidt

Josh Schmidt is an editorial intern and is a native of the Washington D.C Metropolitan area. He is working towards a degree in multi-platform journalism with a minor in history at nearby University of Maryland. Contact Josh at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The presumption of innocence prior to a definitive adjudication of guilt is fundamental to our Constitutional system. In the criminal context, a citizen is innocent until proven guilty. That’s what you learn on day one in your criminal law course. The government must prove every element of the crime charged beyond a reasonable doubt — or you get to go free. But how does this presumption affect a celebrity? How does it differ depending on the crime someone has been charged with. What about the frequency of the allegations? I had a chance to examine my faith in the presumption of innocence when the allegations surrounding recording artist R. Kelly were brought back into the public consciousness. The nature of allegations against the prolific R&B singer gave me pause, and forced me to answer some tough questions about the nature of the benefit of the doubt everyone should be given in criminal matters.

Conceptually, I can wrap my head around a presumption of innocence. It puts the onus on the government to make its case against you. Despite what you’ve been accused of, at least philosophically, a defendant need not put on a case if the government has not shouldered its substantial burden. But in the minds of the lay person, the person who hasn’t read legal opinions by Learned Hand, or Judge Easterbrook, or — God Forbid — Blackstone, all it takes is an accusation of wrongdoing, for a person to be condemned. Despite having gone to law school and believing fundamentally in the presumption of innocence, many times my own natural inclinations are to feel that when someone is accused of especially heinous crimes, “they must have done something.”

That sentiment was never more true than when, some weeks ago, the allegations leveled against recording artist R. Kelly came back to the fore. The Village Voice chronicled the ongoing crusade of journalist Jim DeRogatist to, at the very least, convey the message that there were still more stories — troubling, sickening stories — to be told about the artist R. Kelly and his involvement with under-aged women. What many people relegated to the “rumors from the nineties” category of their pop-culture memory, DeRogatis classifies as heinous, ongoing, and too terrible to not have some basis in truth.

The allegations against Kelly, born Robert Sylvester Kelly, were first broken by DeRogatis when he received an anonymous fax that the artist was being investigated over the course of two years by the sex crimes unit of the Chicago police department. What DeRogatis counts as most remarkable, however, is how those allegations are still classified in the minds of many as “rumors” despite the fact that they were made in filed court documents. Granted, where there is smoke, there is not always fire. A healthy amount of skepticism is natural when it comes to allegations that have not been substantiated in court. What was shocking to me, and I think many, however, was the sheer number of allegations, nudging the idea of Kelly victimizing young women from the plausible, to the probable.

The revelations in the article catch the reader off guard. Not a single allegation, but dozens of lawsuits filed over the years. What DeRogatis explains are multiple sex tapes, only one of which was the basis for the indictment that most remember being leveled against the singer. Without rehashing most of what the Village Voice interview described, the most important concept here is how the masses handle these allegations. The narrative circles back to the presumption of innocence that is the baseline of our criminal system. What do we do in the face of multiple suits alleging heinous acts from the adult Kelly, with women as young as 14 and 15?

The lawyer in me yells, “prove it beyond a reasonable doubt!” The lay person in me thinks, “there is an awful lot of smoke here.” How can I reconcile these perspectives?

The better answer of these choices is to stand by the presumption of innocence. To hew close to the notion that no matter how heinous the charge, it must be proven in open court. The trial is supposed to be the fundamental engine of truth. A search for justice — whatever that means. But that has not been the response since the Village Voice article hit the Internet. In a move that may be in recognition of the allegations resurfacing, Lady Gaga, who had a hit single with R. Kelly with the song “Do What U Want,” released another version of the song with artist Christina Aguilera. Many on the Internet and in the Twitterverse backed off their admiration of the artist in the wake of the Village Voice piece. Where do I stand? Well, I am somewhere in the middle.

There are so many instances when I tell people that I want to be a criminal defense attorney that they say, “So you want to defend rapists and murderers?” If I am annoyed, my response is a flat “yes.” If I am willing to indulge the person, I explain to them that anyone, be he someone arrested for drunk driving, speeding, or serial murder, comes before the court in the exact same position: presumed innocent. He or she is merely a “person accused of _______.” Nothing more, nothing less. R. Kelly can rightfully say the only charge that ever made it to trial — one for child pornography — resulted in an acquittal in 2008. What remains however, are allegations by dozens of very young Black women in the early 2000s of terrible acts by the artist and one reporter’s crusade — not to burn the artist at the stake — but merely to show the public what he himself has seen over the years: doing the research, knocking on doors, and speaking to crying victims.

The presumptions we all have of persons accused of sexual crimes in particular make those cases some of the most volatile. Hell, Law & Order: SVU is, I think, in its 7,000th season and going strong with Android Ice T because of the nature of sex crimes and the pure human emotion involved.

I wonder what it is that makes people take sides so vehemently in the case of R. Kelly? What is it that allows some people to brush off the allegations so lightly? We may never know. There is no convenient answer in situations such as these. But the law defaults to a person’s innocence. It’s something that is hard for many. But it’s the best we’ve got.

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Dominic Jones (@DomPerinyon) is originally from Atlantic City, NJ. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga. followed by law school at the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, DC. In his spare time he enjoys art, photography, and documentary films.

Featured image courtesy of [Allgamenab via Wikipedia]

Dominic Jones

Dominic Jones is originally from Atlantic City, NJ. He attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga. followed by law school at the Washington College of Law at American University in Washington, DC. In his spare time he enjoys art, photography, and documentary films. Contact Dominic at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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