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Artist News Media
New sex abuse allegations against R Kelly made in BBC documentary
By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 28 March 2018
New allegations have been made against R&B star R Kelly in a BBC documentary. These include that he sexually abused a girl from the age of fourteen, later boasting to another woman that he had “trained” the girl to be his “pet”.
Numerous sexual abuse allegations have been made against Kelly over the years, of course, including accusations involving underage girls. He has always denied any wrongdoing and when specifically charged over claims he had filmed the sexual abuse of an underage girl, he was acquitted in 2008.
However, the musician has nevertheless been on the receiving end of numerous civil lawsuits alleging sexual abuse, most of which have been settled out of court. American journalist Jim DeRogatis has been prolific in documenting the various accusations and litigation, most recently in a piece for Buzzfeed last year.
The new BBC Three documentary features Kitti Jones, a former girlfriend of Kelly who also gave an interview to Rolling Stone magazine last year. In the new programme she alleges that Kelly groomed her over two years, forcing her to have sex with him and others in a “sex dungeon” at least ten times.
According to The Guardian, she then says: “I was introduced to one of the girls that he told me he [had] ‘trained’ since she was fourteen; those were his words. I saw that she was dressed like me, that she was saying the things I’d say, and her mannerisms were like mine. That’s when it clicked in my head that he had been grooming me to become one of his ‘pets'”.
She then claims that Kelly made the unnamed woman “crawl on the floor towards me and perform oral sex on me, and he said, ‘this is my fucking pet, I trained her – she’s going to teach you how to be with me”. The documentary doesn’t make it clear how old the unnamed woman would have been at the time of the described incident.
After last year’s Rolling Stone article was published, a rep for Kelly stated: “Mr Kelly is aware of the repeated and now evolving claims of [Ms Jones]. It is unfortunate that Ms Jones, after public statements to the contrary, is now attempting to portray a relationship history with Mr Kelly as anything other than consensual involvement between two adults”.
The rep continued: “As stated previously, Mr Kelly does not control the decision-making or force the actions of any other human being, including Ms Jones, by her own admission. Any claim of wrongdoing of any kind or of mistreatment of any woman by him is false, ill-motived and defamatory”.
The documentary also includes an interview with Rocky Bivens, who previously worked with Kelly, and who discusses attending the secret wedding ceremony in 1994 between the singer and his then fifteen year old musical protégé Aaliyah. The status and even existence of that wedding and marriage have been questioned over the years, with both Kelly and, before her death, Aaliyah, at various times denying any wedding took place.
The new BBC Three documentary ‘R Kelly: Sex, Girls & Videotapes’ – which will also air on BBC One next Tuesday night – is online here.
