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Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime, and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. Then after just 18 months of podcasting with Spreaker, I was able to quit my day job. Follow your podcasting dreams, let's break or handle the hosting, creation, distribution, and monetization of your podcast. Go to spreaker.com. That's spreaker.com. In the 1980s and 90s, a psychopath terrorized the country of Belgium. A serial killer and kidnapper was abducting children in the bright light of day. From Tenderfoot TV in iHeartRadio this is La Monstra, a story of abomination and conspiracy. The story about the man who's simply become known as. Lamaster. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Roy Wood, junior, host of The Daily Show podcast beyond the scenes and we are back for season 2. Beyond the scenes is the podcast where we take the topics and segments that were on The Daily Show and give them a little more love. This season, we're bringing back more Daily Show writers, producers and correspondents, more experts, giving us some extra knowledge you can't get anywhere else. Don't miss it. Listen to beyond the scenes. On the iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello friends, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once again behind the ******** the show where we tell you everything you don't know about the very worst people in all of history. Today is part two of our Epic 2 parter on Robert Kelly, better known as R Kelly the King. Or at least like some level of Baron of R&B. Duke, maybe by count. Squire. Squire, no, that's way too low. Squire of R&B would be like, yeah, I don't know. I don't know enough about R&B to make this joke. Better. How are you doing today, Theresa? I'm OK. You're Theresa Lee? I am. You were my guest on the first episode. You're currently my guest on the second episode. You are host of the podcast. You can tell me anything. You are trying to get a word in edgewise as I talk over you like a man. Not really. I was just agreeing to the things you said. OK. I felt bad because I feel like it definitely interrupted you a couple of times there. No, I always look like I'm about to say something that's true. And that. That's so true. I don't know why. I think it's because I try to like seem attentive, you have resting insight face. Oh, I was told by my psychiatrist that I'm not particularly insightful, not told even in an evaluation I went to. This is not a real digressions, very quick quick sentence, but I took an ADHD test and then I got the whole evaluation and list everything, you know like blah blah, like these risk depression and one of them says insight and just said not extraordinary. Instead of what I'm insightful. I mean I got similar feedback on a B&EI was part of once and I was yeah it's hurtful to hear that from an evaluation. From a clinical point of view. Yeah. From a clinical evaluation of how good you are breaking windows you nobody likes nobody likes to hear that, all right. You don't even ask For more information because I will just derail this conversation that's the behind the ******** on me is going to be a real great three parter coming out someday when I Sophie's. Taking a picture of us right now, except I can't see. You're fantastic. All right, let's get back into Part 2. Now, when we last left Robert Kelly, he had been declared not guilty by a jury of his peers in a court of law. So that's, I mean, it's good for R Kelly. Let's hear about what happened next. Is it, though? I mean, like, you know, he does need help. Yeah, I would say he would probably say that being declared not guilty of 21 counts of child *********** is it was a good thing for him. Or maybe this whole time you wanted to be caught, maybe the whole time you wanted to be caught. Well, we'll see how you feel at the end of this. In March of 2011, Billboard magazine declared Robert Kelly the number one R&B artist of the last 25 years. Four years later, Billboard published another article, this one. Ranking the 35 best R&B artists of all time, they put R Kelly at #15 right under Luther Vandross. I'm no expert on the genre, but whenever people talk about the goat in that particular type of music, R Kelly's name always seems to be in the running. You know, over the course of his career, Kelly has sold more than 60 million albums, which is an astonishing feat for any artist of any era in any genre of music. Now, whenever a famous person is accused of doing terrible things, some chunk of their fan base. Will inevitably rise to defend them. R Kelly fans have a reputation for being particularly devoted. Their defense of him is helped by the fact that he was declared not guilty in a court of law. But of course that does not wipe away the numerous settled out of court lawsuits or the fact that he married a 15 year old. And 2008 did not put an end to the allegations against Kelly. We will be talking today about the numerous details that have come out about his life and the decades since his trial. In July of 2011, the same year Billboard declared him the best R&B singer of the last quarter century, R Kelly went in for an emergency throat. Surgery. He wound up recovering enough that by the end of that year, he was out touring again. And it was on that tour, at a party after a show in Dallas, that R Kelly first met Kitty Jones. Now, in 2017, Kitty was the subject of a blockbuster Rolling Stone article titled Surviving R Kelly. It's one of the two major pieces on Kelly that's broken in the last year. The other was a BuzzFeed article written by Jim Derogatis, formerly of the Chicago Sun Times, eternally mispronounced by me. The title of Jim's article? Parents told police their daughter is being held against her will in R Kelly's cult marks probably the strongest allegations made against the singer yet, so he is now being accused of. Essentially running a sex cult, and that's we'll be talking about today. Doesn't have the holidays. You know what? Nothing goes better with my early January as I'm struggling to get off those Christmas pounds as I'm working to get back into the groove, you know, getting it right. Yeah, the new year. I I just love listening to 45 minutes or so of detailed recitations of sex crimes. That really good way to kick off the year. Good way to kick off the year, good way to kick off the year. Sometimes I just look at pictures of John Wayne Gacy while I'm doing push-ups. That's not relevant, but. There are goals, yeah, it's it's it's my vision board. It's just John Wayne. It's possible this podcast has done some damage to me. It's possible. Sophie's giving you know. I think everyone guessed the look Sophie's giving me. Let's move on. So I'd like to start this episode by talking about Kitty's story, because it seems like what happened to her is emblematic of what happened and is still happening, allegedly to a lot of other women. And again, I have tried to be good about putting in allegedly here. This is all alleged. None of this has been proven in a court of law. There's a lot of evidence, but again, allegedly add that in your head if I forget to drop it in at some point. So Kitty Jones says that she and R Kelly hit it off at this party after his show. He invited her to hang out with him on the next stop of the tour and then handed her a piece of paper with his phone number on it. He told her to text him. When she did, he instructed her to always call him Daddy. Next, he texted her sin pick, which she did, and like that they were off. He flew her out to Denver and here's the Rolling Stone. The Rolling Stone. Here's Rolling Stone. I was like, what was? It's Mick Jagger. He's been he's really been the point man on this story. Here's Rolling Stone. I got there before he did because he of course doesn't like to fly, so he's taking the bus. Jones says she had sent Kelly racy photos while he was in route to the hotel and was excited to reunite face to face. As she waited in the hotel room for Kelly to arrive, she heard a knock at the door. He brushed past me, Jones says. I'm thinking we're going to hug or Peck each other. But he plopped down on the couch and pulled out his penis and started pleasuring himself. Now, that's not a great first move, but these are both adults. For one thing. Another league was going on here. And also everything's different for celebrities. It was attracted to him and was just like, well, OK, fine, she says. Maybe he just has weird ways of getting off. The two had oral sex that weekend with Kelly, according to Jones. Saying things like, I got to teach you how to be with me and I got to train you, he was like a drill Sergeant even when he was pleasuring me, Jones says. He was telling me how to bend my back or move my leg here. I'm like, why is he directing it like this? It was very uncomfortable, but at the same time, he's one of the most famous R&B singers in the world. Super rich, flying you out and giving you a bunch of attention. So while there were a bunch of red flags. It's easy to see how someone in Kitty's position could convince herself to ignore them. I think everyone listening to this, if you've been in relationships that have turned pear shape, have the experience of ignoring red flags? Sure, yeah. They don't have the rich for me to ignore their red flag. They don't have to be rich. So if he's got 10s of millions of dollars and he's one of the most famous people in the industry that you're in, it's easier to ignore those red flags. Was that a great line from Bojack Horseman when you're looking at things with rose colored glasses? All the red flags just look like flags. Yeah, I just interrupted you again. Well, that's a red flag right there. Yeah, it's all good. I talk a lot. You should interrupt me because I interrupt people. It's been you just been going through some of the stuff these victims have been doing and there you go. Well, that's just because I have Libra on my chart, so whoa. Well, now I am going to interrupt. Astrology has been brought into it, and that's the excuse I need to to throw my logic brain at this. Let me tell you why I clapped the hood of my car whenever I speed through a red light, because men are not superstitious. They just know things. Yeah, like if you tap the hood of your car when you run through a red light, the police can't catch you. Oh, that's why I do it. I make a wish. Oh, OK, cool. That the police won't catch me. That the police won't feel like we're both doing the same thing there. OK, so yeah, there were some red flags, but yeah, it's easy to see how she could have ignored them at first. Kitty found herself drawn more and more into R Kelly's world. She was a fresh divorcee, back on the dating field for the first time in years and not really into, you know, dating sucks. Dating on just like meeting Randos and places is not the best thing ever. So having this rich, famous guy. Whose art she loved. Fly her all around the world and treat her like the only woman on Earth seemed pretty ******* great. You can see how it would wipe some of those flags away and why it would make her forget the unsettling news report she'd been hearing about Kelly for years. They did come up in conversations with her friends. Quote Rob Kind of makes you feel like you have to defend him. It's like you and him against the world. If someone brought him up in conversation, immediately a wall went up. You know, some of the first stuff Kelly told her was like that his girlfriend had died and he watched her die when he was eight, you know, he talked about his mom dying. I think when we started this story, it's easy. R Kelly just talking about his background can get you on a side of it, like he's been through some **** and he's just been declared not guilty in a court of law. You can again, it's a good Tinder bio. Not guilty in a court of law. That's actually my whole resume. Yeah, yeah, not in prison currently. So in September of 2011, Kitty Jones flew to Chicago to visit R Kelly's Trump Tower apartment. Robert sent his driver to pick her up from the airport and ordered her not to talk to him and to report back if he talked to her. From this point, she started noticing that all the men in Kelly's orbit kept a strict distance from her. In total, their relationship would last more than two years. Kitty Jones did the thing that I think Hollywood has taught all of us to do. She cast caution to the win, let love into her heart, and gave up everything to embark on a magical journey with a rich suitor. How many romantic comedies have the same basic plot, working woman and like a high demand career, like a radio DJ or an architect or whatever, you know, suddenly meets this ridiculously wealthy man who sweeps her off her carefully planned life path and off her feet and like, she has this romantic it that's like. Half of the room romcoms I've seen. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty Woman. This is like the 50 Shades of grey fantasy. Like, he's a little bit hard and creepy in some ways, but like, he's also this super rich, famous guy. And I don't know, I feel like it's one of those things where, like, it could be easy to be, like, how could you let this thing go to where it's about to go? You're a nice person. You want to think the best of people. So it's hard to look someone in the face who's being nice to you and be like, you're bad. Yeah. Because people are multifaceted. They're not just good and bad and, you know, yeah, they do bad things. And that we do have to take that into account. But they could be kind. Yeah. And it's like anyone you're going to get into a long term relationship with, you will notice certain red flags about them because everybody has aspects of their behavior that could turn into serious problems, right? Maybe she thought she could fix it. Maybe she was like, oh, he's getting better. It's getting better, part of her told her. We are super good at lying to ourselves. And I I think she made the same decision. And where there's a lot of other women that have made these decisions, I just want to make it clear, like, everything about her actions up to this point makes sense to me. I mean, it is weird, like when survivors come out like women, mostly women, but not always women. But oftentimes women get blamed for wanting to believe the best in people. And so that is why you why did you go with them? Why did you, why did not say anything? Because they wanted to believe. Yeah. And the blame. Not push on the man for doing the bad thing, but yeah, and it's all compounded when, like, this is all happening in luxury, like, first class airfare and, like, gigantic, fancy, beautiful, furnished apartments and like, all this, like that has an impact. Sure, we're trained to respond differently to that sort of thing. So in November, Jones quit her job and left Texas. She moved to R Kelly's Trump Tower apartment. At least one of her friends at the time encouraged her to do it, saying you only live once. I mean, **** it's R Kelly. Good logic. There was some weirdness right off the bat. In her interview with Rolling Stone, Kitty recalled one of the first orders Kelly gave her. He said, I have friends and I have girls I've raised. I didn't know what he meant by raised at the time, he said. I eventually want you to meet them, but I want to make sure you're mentally ready for that. Ohh, no. Yes. That away. That's a real red flag right there. Yeah, that is. That's like the size of that red flag they unraveled on the Reichstag when. 3rd Reich fell that that scale of red flag, so as soon as she arrived, Kelly required her to wear baggy sweatpants. Anytime Kitty went outside and to text him with extreme regularity so he always knew where she was. She would send texts like Daddy, I need to go to the restroom if she needed to like poop or something. New commands were introduced with regularity. Kelly would ask her to stand up and greet him whenever he entered a room. Kitty says it took about a month for R Kelly to hit her for the first time. Yeah, well, I wanna like kind of interject a little on because I think there's some stuff getting confounded because I do think like clearly he's mountain of issues and clearly did doing things that without consent, I'm sure with these girls. But I also like there is like the whole idea of like, you know, Doms and Subs that in itself, while if you're outside of it could be funny, is not inherently bad. Like if it was a consensual relationship of being like, I'm gonna text Daddy whatever, that, like it might be like weird for someone who doesn't do it. But that in itself, I don't think it is inherently a problem. It's only a problem if it's nonconsensual because there are plenty of adults who get in relationships like that where it's for both sides pleasurable to be the sub and be the Dom. So I just want to add that because I don't think the idea of texting like, you know, some people are into that. You're like, oh, text me every time you go. Absolutely. As long as you're safe word. And it's completely, you know, consensual, I think that would be fine. Clearly, I don't think that's the case, but I don't want to confound some of the elements with them. Germinal activity, #1, aside from the allegations of physical violence, nothing we're talking about right now is clear evidence of criminal activity or if she's into it or if she lied about being into it. Yeah, we should teach women to be more clear about what they want. But, you know, if he said this is a thing I'm into, are you down? And she said yes and she wasn't. That is a little bit Gray area because. You know, I don't know. I I've known, like everything. Up until we hit physical violence point, everything we're talking about could potentially be part of something innocuous, all of the behavior. Yeah. So. Killing hitting her occurred because she went back to Dallas for Thanksgiving and while she was there, one of her friends or family members showed her the infamous R Kelly pee tape. She got angry and called him to ask about it. He responded, ***** don't you ever ******* accuse me of something like that. When she flew back, Kitty claims R Kelly met her at the airport. My heart was just beating through my chest. He just turned into a monster. I blame myself because I was like, maybe I shouldn't have said anything. Jones claims R Kelly got her back to his car and then began slapping her repeatedly. I was putting my hand over my face and telling him I was sorry. He would start kicking me, telling me I was a stupid ***** and don't ever get in his business. Katie Jones alleges that scenes like this took place roughly 10 times in the first year they lived together. In between, things would seem to return to normal, they'd shop and have fun, and once they've been together for over a year, he even asked her to take part in his upcoming tour. At the time, it probably looked like things were getting better, like maybe she'd fixed some of the ****** ** things about him. The violence dried up and suddenly the relationship started to look like it was going to be the awesome ride it was always supposed to be. Getting to be like you. I saw you doing a bad thing. Be like, don't accuse me of doing a bad thing. It's like, no, no, I'm not accusing you. I saw you do a bad thing. It's on tape. Yeah, that's that's straight up, guest. Yeah. Yeah, he's definitely gaslighting her. Here's where the Rolling Stone describing Kitty's role in the tour because he actually gave her a job during the tour. After Kelly brings Jones on stage, two men dressed in white lab coats make her sign a waiver and chain her arms inside a white cage. Kelly enters as a white sheet is draped over the cage, obscuring the couple. The cage begins rocking as the band's music intensifies, with Jones and Kelly eventually shone silhouetted. After Kelly simulates oral sex on Jones, the two reemerge in a mock fatigue, Jones's let off stage. I've never paraded around anybody before, Jones says Kelly told her before the tour started. I'm going to make sure people see us together so again, drawing her in on January 2013, after they got back from the tour, R Kelly had Kitty Jones moved out of his Trump Tower apartment and into a room in his recording studio. She claims she learned later that Kelly was moving another girl into the Trump Tower apartment, but at the time, she thought they were just both kind of transitioning over to a new place. Now, R Kelly never told her this, but she says she eventually grew to realize she was living with two other women in the rooms attached to R Kelly's recording studio. Kelly did his best to stop the women from learning about each other. The rooms were filled with cameras, and the women weren't allowed to leave without getting his permission first. It's a testament to the degree of control he was exercising over these people that it actually took a while for Jones to realize she wasn't alone. Wow, yeah, that's weird. When Kitty Jones did something our Kelly defined his misbehaving. He take away her phone for two months since she had to text him to do stuff like use the bathroom or eat. This effectively cut her off from being able to maintain essential biological functions. She claims it was March 2013 before she actually met another one of our Kelly's girlfriend. Seems like the wrong word. She says he brought the woman in naked and said I raised her. I've trained this ***** this is my pet. Then he made the other woman perform oral sex on her. Kelly describes the next chunk of their relationship as six months of Hell. Yikes. So you essentially grooming them to point and then cutting them off from. There are one regular lives and relationships. So that they does. Yeah. He's doing all of the things that cult does except for inventing his own language, I guess. Well, maybe. I mean, he had, she had to call him Daddy. Like, there's probably more coded language they had to use. You're right. You're right. And there's the Rolling Stone article includes images of the texts and stuff. They've got her phone, like, text she would send him saying, like, I need this food or like, can I go to the bathroom and stuff like that. So, like, some of this is documented. Again, not illegal. This there are consensual relationships that work like this, or at least at times there are some like 24/7, you know? So again, we're not condemning that. But clearly Kitty was not giving enthusiastic consent. And then wait, so the thing on stage, she signs a waiver on stage? Yeah, it was part of like an act. So the whole gimmick is that. So that's, I think the gimmick is that he's pleasuring a random woman. She's just so insatiable or whatever. But I think it's just because it's funny. Illegal or something. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, ohh, you're gonna get hurt cause I'm so good. Yeah, something like that. Like that. Speaking of enthusiastic consent, you remember when I said that a couple of sentences ago? Mint Mobile offers premium wireless starting at just 15 bucks a month. And now for the plot twist. Nope, there isn't one. Mint Mobile just has premium wireless from 15 bucks a month. There's no trapping you into a two year contract. You're opening the bill to find all these nuts fees. There's no luring you in with free subscriptions or streaming services that you'll forget to cancel and then be charged full price for none of that. For anyone who hates their phone Bill, Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for just $15.00 a month. Mint Mobile will give you the best rate whether you're buying one or for a family and at Mint. 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No matter how big or small they happen to be so if you're thinking of giving therapy a try better help is a great. Option it's convenient, accessible, affordable, and it is entirely online. You can get matched with a therapist after filling out a brief survey, and if the therapist that you get matched with doesn't wind up working out, you can switch therapists at any time. When you want to be a better problem solver, therapy can get you there. Visit betterhelp.com behind today to get 10% off your first month. That's better helpp.com/behind betterhelp.com/behind. This fall on revisionist history, is there anything that we haven't talked about or or I should have asked you or you'd like to add that seems relevant? You should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. A story about sacrifice. I think his suffering drove him to try to alleviate suffering. And the shocking discovery I made where I faced the consequences of writing a book I thought would help people? Isn't that funny? It's not funny at all. It's depressing. Very depressing. Religious history is back with more. Listen to revisionist history on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I've never seen less enthusiasm for a great idea in my life. We're back, we're talking about. Products. Do you love a good service? I do. Do you like products? I love it. If you had to rank products and services, would you put products first or services? I think they go hand in hand. OK, I'm going to go product. That services me or services that I don't know services the product. I do love being produced, Sophie. We brought that around nicely. All right, let's talk about our Kelly more. OK, great. OK. I thought you were going to go into read or something. So we had just gotten to the point where Kelly introduced Kitty to the women other woman he had trained, which is the other women who are living in this weird. Do we know how many there were? Getting to that? It's unclear exactly how many exist in total. There were three total women living in the building around this recording studio, plus another woman in Trump Tower at the time. So at least 4 ladies and like the Chicago area. But yeah, so Kitty describes, yeah, the next chunk of their relationship is 6 months of hell. This recording studio weird ****** compound is the cult described in the BuzzFeed article. That article starts with the story of Jay, a mother who alleges that R Kelly brainwashed her daughter and brought her daughter into this creepy carousel of abused women that seems to exist if all this reporting is accurate. Between them, Rolling Stone and BuzzFeed have done their homework. BuzzFeed talked to Kitty Jones as well, in addition to two other members of our Kelly's inner circles. There's a lot of sources for both of these articles. There's a lot of research and backup that's been done. What they found suggests that six women live. In buildings owned by Kelly and Chicago in Atlanta, at least six women, or at least in 2017, at least six women there were all subject to the same sorts of controls as Kitty Jones. Kelly tells them when to eat and bathe makes them do what he wants to their bodies, and of course, he films every sex act between them. Jay claims that her daughter, who of course was an aspiring singer, met Kelly backstage after a show in Indio, CA. You might expect that experience normally yield an autographed at best, but Kelly listened to the 19 year old's demo CD and gave her a detailed. Insightful critiques of her performance now. This was in 2015, and most R&B fans would probably agree that R Kelly, you know, of course the mom psyched if you're like a fan R&B, your daughter wants to be in that genre, and like one of the best guys ever is listening to her demo CD and giving her critiques. Of course, as a mom, you're probably excited. What happened next was similar enough to what we saw with Kitty. Kelly started flying Jay's daughter to hang with him, ostensibly so he could help shape and boost her career. Jay went along with the situation because First off, who wouldn't want your kid to be rich and successful? And 2nd, her kid was 19, so there's nothing she could do to stop it. And she may be like with parents who don't understand the industry might be like, Oh well, this might just be part of it. They don't really know. They don't really know. And again, there's nothing you can do, right? So they were aware of the allegations against. Kelly, both Jay and her daughter, and Jay and her husband tried to make sure that one of them would be around whenever their daughter was with Kelly. But, you know, our Kelly's a multimillionaire with essentially unlimited resources, so things got started before too long. Jay's daughter moved in with our Kelly and quickly ceased almost all contact with her parents. They still get the occasional scattered phone call, but the last time they saw their girl was on December 1st, 2016. It was as if she was brainwashed. She looked like a prisoner. It was horrible. I hugged her and hugged her, but she 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. BuzzFeed put together a list of some other woman they believe are cut up in this. Whatever. Thing is, this was like 2017. A 31 year old DIN mother who trained newcomers on how Kelly liked to be pleasured sexually. She has been best friends since high school with the girl in the videotape for which Kelly was tried in 2008. She recently parted. Yeah, well, one of them. She recently parted ways with Kelly, these sources say. A 25 year old woman who has also been part of Kelly 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 a 18 year old singer from Polk County, Florida. Max said the Florida singer is Kelly's favorite, his number one girl. Now. You'll notice everyone involved in this is 18 or older, so it's possible that some were younger when things started. So you know there's no law being broken necessarily here except for the allegations of physical violence. Those are just allegations at this point now, years ago, a former young protege of R Kelly. They told Jim Derogatis that, quote, he likes the babies and that's the sickness. He can control her and she don't know no better. If the details of these women are correct, it is possible Kelly has gotten over that sickness because these are all adults. Or it might be evidence that underage women were never the draw to him. Maybe it's always been about control all along and that's why he always sought out such young women. If you take this view of it, then maybe it just took him decades to build up the skills necessary to do what he did to an adult like Kitty Jones and other adults that like, who knows in his 20s. He could only get away with doing it for 16 year olds. Now he's like 50 something. He's able to more effectively manipulate adults, and that's what it's about, is the control. Maybe that's it. BuzzFeed also talked to the parents of that 18 year old singer from Florida, Kelly, supposed new favorite. She was 17 when they met after some of Kelly's people picked her and a few other young women out at a concert and pulled them on stage during the show. Afterwards, one of Kelly's people handed her his phone number. Her parents were OK with them talking at first because, you know, they figured they could make sure one of them was with her whenever she met him and they thought it would be a great opportunity for her. She had a future in the music industry, this girl's mother told Jim Derogatis. That quote. My thing was I trusted I have never been in the music industry before. Ever. He is a lyrical genius. He's our Kelly. And the fact is that he went to court, he was never found guilty. He was acquitted and we were led to believe there is no truth in it. Now. I got all 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 before? Yeah, I'd be ****** about the case too. Now, it's hard to say if Kelly did anything illegal here. The girl's mom does allege that one day after school, her daughter met R Kelly after classes without telling her parents. First they came to the hotel and called the cops, and she came down and, you know, left with them. Kelly had refused to speak to them. Their girl was 17 at this point, and it would have been illegal if they did anything at that point. But soon enough, she was 18 and old enough to do whatever she wanted. And as soon as she was 18, she moved in with R Kelly, one of Kelly's former close associates, who spoke with BuzzFeed. The person who claimed this lady is Kelly's favorite, but he also says he witnessed the singer Punisher quote. He left the Florida woman on the tour bus for like 3 days and she was not allowed to come out. 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. What kind of homework are you talking about? Oh, boy. That look is very ominous. What do you what kind of homework do you? It's something gross. It's something he's homework is standing for something gross here. I'm going to guess. OK. Yeah. And that is more or less the situation today. Kelly and his representatives deny any wrongdoing. These are all consensual relationships between adults, and right now it truly seems like there is nothing that can really be done about this from a legal standpoint. However, several boycott campaigns have been raised against the musician. Hashtag mute R Kelly being the most notable. He has had a number of his shows shut down, and it does seem like a measure of justice has been done via journalism and public outrage. Robert Kelly's popularity has fallen significantly in the last decade in 2015. You released the buffet, his 13th studio album. It is the worst performing album of his career, selling only 26,000 copies in its first week. His 2016 album 12 Nights of Christmas seems to have sold better, peaking at 177 on the Billboard 200 chart, but he's not putting out the numbers he used to. Critical reception to his music has also flattened out in recent years as possible. Some of this is due to the fact that he's in his 50s now, and it's not uncommon for people to. But yeah, it seems like it's possible that all of the reporting and all of that. Boycott campaigns have had an impact. Jim Derogatis, the journalist most responsible for breaking the stories of Kelly's alleged sexual abuse and exploitation of women, was actually mentioned in a recent R Kelly Song. He's actually appeared in several of our Kelly songs over the years. In July of 2018, R Kelly dropped the 19 minute track. I admit. Here are some lyrics. Yeah, to Jim Derogatis. Whatever your name is, you've been trying to destroy me for 25 whole years, right? In the same stories over and over again off my name. You've done, went and made yourself a career. But guess what? I pray for you and family. And all my other enemies. I'm not going to let y'all steal my joy. I'm just gonna keep on doing me now. I don't know what else to say except I'm so falsely accused. Tell me how you can judge when you've never walked in my shoes. So easy to mess up someone else's life. You know, I think that R Kelly, I don't because I'm trying to think like, is he a narcissist? But I don't think you quite fits the bill. But the elements of like, he has some elements of that like narcissist, don't he doesn't believe he's wrong and I do believe that in that part, he's telling the truth. So I do think he truly believes he's falsely accused because he in his mind, in a twisted way, he's justified all of his interactions. So that's where it gets tricky because people with someone so famous that they love want that gotcha. Where they're like, I'm wrong and I lied, but I think they're never going to get that because I don't think he believes that he lied. I think he believes because he's done these summersault in his head to convince himself. I think believes he's innocent because of whatever has passed or whatever, and so he's never going to admit he's lied in that sense. So we just have to decide. Now, uh, variety interview Jim Derogatis about this and I'd like to read a quote from that variety article. This is Jim. I have accomplished a lot in my life besides this R Kelly story, but I continue to get calls from sources 6 or 7 * a week as I have for 18 years saying R Kelly has hurt me or my daughter. Allegedly you're not a journalist or a human being. If you get those calls and do not do your job has it made me rich laughs? I have not gotten rich from reporting on R Kelly. I've had a marriage ruined, I've had many sleepless nights and I have an ulcer which sounds self-serving and I don't mean to. Because what I've endured over 18 years is nothing compared to the stories I've heard from young women who had relationships with him that left them devastated, destroyed their families and their lives to the point of attempting suicide. Those are in public court documents and on the record interviews. In October 2018, Kelly's wife went public on the view with explicit allegations of physical abuse at the hands of her ex-husband. She says she went public, in essence, to support the other women, like Kitty Jones, who have talked openly about the abuse they claim to have suffered at the hands of Robert Kelly. I'd like to play a little bit of that. I'm going to try and get through without crying. Very difficult. A lot of people know that I'm a professional dancer, so my body is my work, and I remember one time he attacked me in the back of a Hummer, and I do suffer from PTSD because of it. Whenever Hummers, when I would see them on the road, I would shake my hands, would sweat, and I would get nervous and I couldn't breathe. And he attacked me one time in the back of a Hummer, and I thought I was going to die in the back of the Hummer because what he had done, he'd taken this left arm and pulled it behind me, and his weight was on my body, but he didn't realize his forearm. Was on my neck. So as he's pressing down, my breathing is getting labored. And the only reason why I think I made it out is because I said, Robert, you're going to kill me. I can't breathe. You have to get your arm off of my neck. And I just remember sitting in the back of the Hummer and it got blue. And I just thought, Oh my God, I'm going to die in the back of this Hummer. And he's going to drive off with my body in the back seat and nobody's going to know. Here. I don't know what other sound to make at the end of that. To end, I would like to go back to that 2016 GQ interview I quoted at the start of the first episode. The writer of that interviewed Kelly and got a lot of detail about Kelly's own sexual abuse. As a child. Roberts answers to his questions are thoughtful and complex. At one point, he reflects on the generational nature of abuse. This is Robert Kelly's quote. As I'm older, I look at it and I know that it had to be not just about me and them, but them and somebody older than them when they were younger and whatever happened to them when they were younger, I looked at it as if it was some sort of. Like, I don't know, a generational curse, so to speak, going down through the family. Not just started with her doing that to me. Later in the interview, R Kelly admits that this experience caused him to be sexual much earlier than was healthy. Then he said, quote, you know, no different from putting a loaded gun in a kid's hand. He going to grow up to being a shooter, probably. I think it affects you tremendously when that happens at an early age. To be more ******* your hormones are more up than they would be normally mine was. The reporter asked him. And do you think that set you on the path that you kept on R Kelly responded. Yeah, in a lot of ways, absolutely, I think so. Dang. So I didn't like what I said about him not knowing he's wrong. That sounds like a guilty man. That does sound like a really ******* guilty man, right? Yeah, allegedly. You know what sucks is that because people with stories like that, people wait so long for that moment to like, you know what? You know already? But we're waiting for, like, a a moment of truth. But you don't need that. We have it. But what sucks about that is, like, let's say he gets to 90 and it's like, on his deathbed and then he comes back and apologizes. You know, people are going to forgive him. And that's the thing. It's like, no, we got to stop it in its tracks. We have to stop pushing people to show us the truth. We know the truth. Yeah, we know the truth. In this case, I think there's enough. We need to wait for him to beg for forgiveness so we can. Give him no because he's going to like at the end of before he dies. He's probably be like ****. Alright? I wanna die knowing that I made all my wrongs right by then. He's already done too many wrongs. Yeah, we should stop him from doing it now. But also like he can't stop him with any laws. There's probably nothing illegal being done other than I'm guessing he's hitting these women pretty regularly, which is illegal. But if they don't like you can't just like have a cop hang out next to him all the time and wait for him to abuse. I don't condone this, but This is why I do think it's funny. When people make this joke, and I, for the record, I don't condone this, but whenever people are like, you know what? Let's just do it back to them. And I don't think we should do that. But when women are very angry and say that I'm like, yeah, because they're not responding to the peaceful protest, like, you know, he's just, he knows he's just going to get away with it. There is no point where. And again, I'm not actually this kind of joke. I don't really think we should abuse him back. But it's like, I don't know, there's more to be done than nothing. Yeah. I think the boycotts are a lot, I think trying to like. A lot of places have stopped reviewing his music. I know Rolling Stone won't anymore. I think we're past that. I think we're past boycotting. I don't know what else there is to do, though, other than you try to take away this guy's money until they're unless they're like. As soon as someone else brings a case to court, then you can support that person. But like. Up until that point, there's you can't. I don't know. Legally, there's not much to do but cut off *** ****. All right, well, how about you and I roll down to the Los Angeles County Courthouse and we file for a writ of **** removal? Or just, like, spend *** ****? That was harsh. I don't think we should cut it off. I think we should, like, suspend it until he stops being a temporary restraining order on him in his own penis. Confiscated by the government. Confiscated by the government. I know exactly which LAPD officer. I would have delivered that. OK, he lives near my street. He has very large hands about that. All right, we successfully ended on a light note with that joke about an LAPD officers enormous, uncomfortable hands. Teresa, you got some plug cables to plug? Sure. I'm at Larisa T on Twitter and Instagram, and I have a podcast called You can tell me anything. And I'm Robert Evans. I have a book called A Brief History of ice. You can buy it on Amazon. I hurt myself with drugs. And and and Theresa May. I know I get messages regularly about that. You took we I gave you way too many mushrooms without meaning to, and you tripped for hours. Yeah, that was a fun night. It was fun. We were all way too high. Well, that's going to do it for us today. You can find this podcast behindthebastards.com. You can find us on Twitter and Instagram at ******** pod. And you can buy our merch at T public behind the ********. We got cups, we got stickers, we got shirts. We got hoodies. We have a scale replica of the Fat Boy atomic bomb that was dropped in 1945 with a picture of my face smiling on it. So all of those products and more available on our teepublic store behind the ******** check us out. And until next week, remember I love statistically stochastically roughly 40% of you. Hello, I'm Erica Kelly from the podcast Southern Fried True crime and if you want to go from podcast fan to podcast host, do what I did and check out spreaker from iheart. I was working in accounting and hating it. 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