‘Surviving R. Kelly’ had a big impact. So they made a sequel

A new Lifetime series examines the criminal charges against the singer, and how accusing him changed the lives of the women who came forward. By Elizabeth A. Harris & Jacey Fortin Last year, for R. Kelly and the women he is accused of abusing, everything changed – and the Lifetime documentary series ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ […]

A new Lifetime series examines the criminal charges against the singer, and how accusing him changed the lives of the women who came forward.

By Elizabeth A. Harris & Jacey Fortin

Last year, for R. Kelly and the women he is accused of abusing, everything changed – and the Lifetime documentary series ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ was a big reason.

Now, a new five-part instalment, “Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning,” will examine what has happened since the series aired, including the singer’s metastasizing legal troubles and what became of the women who spoke out.

For decades, there were lawsuits that accused Mr. Kelly of having sex with minors. There was his marriage to the singer Aaliyah when she was just 15. And there was a graphic sex tape – widely bootlegged, available on street corners across the country – which prosecutors said showed Mr. Kelly having sex with and urinating on a girl who was barely a teenager.

None of that brought him down, and Robert Kelly, 52, an R&B superstar and bankable hitmaker, went on performing and recording, singing and making money.

But within weeks of Lifetime’s debut broadcast of “Surviving R. Kelly” last January, he was dropped by his record label, then arrrested the following month in Chicago. Today, he is in jail facing a long list of state and federal charges, including child pornography, sexual assault and obstruction of justice.

Mr. Kelly has denied all the charges against him.

The new series will air across three nights beginning Thursday. Here’s a look at what’s in it and the history of how R. Kelly got here.

Threats, Stress and a Seizure

“Surviving R. Kelly” was one of the most-viewed programs in the history of the Lifetime network. Part of what gave it power was its reliance on long, intimate interviews with women who accused Mr. Kelly of emotionally and physically abusing them, telling these women whom they could speak with and look at, when they could eat and even when they could use the bathroom. The sequel once again puts the audience face to face with his accusers.

“Part II: The Reckoning” includes material relating to allegations against Mr. Kelly that have surfaced over the past year, and it has interviews with new women. Viewers will hear for the first time from Tiffany Hawkins, who was the first person to file a lawsuit accusing the singer of having sex with her when she was underage.

The new series also spends more time with accusers who appeared in the original series, who describe what has happened to them since. One woman says that Mr. Kelly’s associates threatened to release a compromising video of her with Mr. Kelly and that she had a seizure from the stress. Another says that strangers, presumably R. Kelly fans, who recognized her while she was out with her children, threatened to beat her up in a parking lot. Several women describe extensive online threats and harassment. The members of one young woman’s family say they had to move.

The documentary shares emotional interviews with the parents of some of the women, including a pastor and his wife. Dream Hampton, one of the executive producers, suggested last month that this served, in essence, as a response to viewers who had wondered: where were their parents?

“Part II: The Reckoning” also chronicles the mounting charges against Mr. Kelly, starting with his arrest in February.

Early Success and Trouble

How did Mr. Kelly get here? A Chicago native, he released his first solo album, “12 Play,” in 1993, propelling him to fame with chart-topping singles including “Bump ’N’ Grind” and “Your Body’s Callin’.”

In 1994, when Mr. Kelly was 27, he married Aaliyah Haughton, who was just 15, below the minimum age for marriage in Illinois. The marriage was later annulled; Ms. Haughton, who performed as Aaliyah, became a popular singer and died in a plane crash in 2001.

In 1996, Mr. Kelly, then 29, married again, this time to a dancer, Andrea Lee, who was 22. Together, they had three children. They divorced in 2009, and her accusations of emotional and physical abuse at his hands were chronicled in “Surviving R. Kelly.”

But how was Mr. Kelly able to marry Aaliyah when she was just 15? Not long after it happened, Vibe magazine found the marriage certificate, which falsely listed her as 18. Last month, federal prosecutors accused him of having bribed a government official in Illinois so that he could get Aaliyah a fake ID. With that, the prosecutors say, Mr. Kelly and Aaliyah were able to obtain the marriage license.

An Infamous Video

In the years after he married Ms. Lee, Mr. Kelly settled lawsuits from at least three women accusing him of having sex with them while they were underage. He also won three Grammys for his hit single “I Believe I Can Fly.”

In 2002, a video that appeared to show Mr. Kelly having sex with a teenage girl and urinating in her mouth was sent to Jim DeRogatis, a music journalist at The Chicago Sun-Times, which reported that the footage was being investigated by the Chicago police.

That June, after a police investigation into the video footage, Mr. Kelly was indicted by a grand jury in Chicago on 21 child pornography counts. But the case took six years to come to trial. His lawyers argued it was not certain that Mr. Kelly was the man in the video or that the young girl was who prosecutors said she was.

Although she was identified by friends and extended family, neither she nor her parents testified. Mr. Kelly was found not guilty in 2008 on all counts.

He continued to release music and performed at the World Cup in 2010, at Pitchfork Music Festival in 2013, at Lollapalooza in 2014 and at the Soul Train Awards in 2015.

Last year, Mr. Kelly was accused by a federal grand jury of having bribed the person at the center of his 2008 trial, and her family, multiple times for more than a dozen years. In exchange for money and gifts, including a GMC Yukon Denali SUV, they were told to lie to investigators to protect him, according to the indictment.

The Heat Picks Up

In July 2017, a BuzzFeed article by Mr. DeRogatis, “Inside the Pied Piper of R&B’s ‘Cult,’” reported on allegations that the singer was living with several young women and controlling them by taking away their phones, limiting contact with their families and having them abide by restrictive rules that governed, among other things, what they ate, when they bathed and when they slept.

It was one of a series of reports that put Mr. Kelly in the spotlight again. But this time the #MeToo movement, started by the activist Tarana Burke about a decade earlier, was about to explode. A campaign of protests, in person and on social media under the hashtag #MuteRKelly, began to pick up steam.

Concerts were canceled and people close to the singer, including an assistant, a lawyer and a publicist, parted ways with him. Spotify removed his music from its official playlists.

Criminal Charges

After “Surviving R. Kelly” aired, Kimberly Foxx, Chicago’s top prosecutor, publicly called for women to come forward, and by the following month, Mr. Kelly had been arrested and charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. Numerous local and federal charges have since been added in Illinois, New York and Minnesota.

Among them are charges that he produced child pornography, conspired to obstruct justice and violated the Mann Act, which prohibits moving people across state lines for the purpose of engaging in illegal sexual activity.

Mr. Kelly has been in federal custody in Chicago since July. He is scheduled to stand trial on federal charges in April.

 

Source: The New Yorker