If you believe the explosive report coming from Buzzfeed News, it looks like R. Kelly hasn’t learned a thing since coming close to going to prison for allegedly urinating on an underage girl during a videotaped sex session many years ago.
This incendiary report goes a long way into feeding his image as a two-legged predator who stalks young girls for his allegedly perverted sexual gratification — and continues to detract from his status as one of the most prolific songwriters of the modern era. The R&B singer, for his part, vehemently denies that he has engaged in such abhorrent activities.
Buzzfeed just completed an exposé on the singer, unearthing numerous incidences of young women of consenting age becoming involved with him for professional reasons only to leave their homes and cut off all contact with their families. Reportedly, they are all living with him and a group of women in a “cult-like” environment in his properties in Chicago and in suburban Atlanta where they carry on sexual relationships under a strict set of rules.
The problem is this: the women are all over the age of consent and claim that they are there of their own volition. Therefore, there isn’t anything authorities can do legally to make them return to their families.
Buzzfeed said they conducted interviews with Cheryl Mack, Kitti Jones, and Asante McGee, all former members of Kelly’s entourage. They also spoke with family members of two women desperate to get their daughters home, and this is what they uncovered:
Mack, Jones, and McGee say six women live in properties rented by Kelly in Chicago and the Atlanta suburbs, and he 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. According to Mack and Jones, if the women break any of Kelly’s “rules,” he punishes them physically and verbally.
The women in Kelly’s entourage initially think “This is R. Kelly, I’m going to live a lavish lifestyle,” said Mack, who worked as Kelly’s personal assistant for a year and a half starting in 2013 and has remained in touch with some members of his inner circle. “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.”
According to Mack, Jones, and McGee, the women living in Kelly’s Duluth, Georgia, “guest house” or his Chicago recording studio last summer include the following:
- 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 with Kelly.
- 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.”
R. Kelly’s lawyer fervently attacks the Buzzfeed report with this statement via email: “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,” Linda Mensch, a civil rights lawyer who represents Kelly wrote. “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.”
Since that time, Kelly himself has come out with a denial according to TMZ:
A rep for the singer said: “Mr. Robert Kelly is both alarmed and disturbed by the recent revelations attributed to him. Mr. Kelly unequivocally denies such accusations and will work diligently and forcibly to pursue his accusers and clear his name.”
What do you think? Do you believe the reports of R. Kelly keeping young women in sex-cult like environments where he brainwashes them and keeps them from their families?
