Trigger Warning: Mentions of Sexual Assault, Rape, and Child Pornography
On September 27th, the world renowned, Grammy-award-winning R&B star R. Kelly was found guilty of all the charges filed against him pertaining to his sex trafficking ring. After six weeks of testimony, R. Kelly was convicted on nine criminal counts: one count of racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act. Under the act, Kelly was foung guilty of kidnapping, sexual exploitation of a child, and sex trafficking. Currently, Kelly faces another trial in Chicago, and is in the process of appealing the September conviction. Kelly will spend at least ten years – if not the rest of his life – in prison.
The conviction is a powerful one, as it comes on the tail-end of other powerful male celebrities being held accountable for violent acts against women, such as Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. Similar to Weinstein and Cosby, Kelly abused his position of power within the industry. Kelly notoriously sought out young and teenage girls at his events and concerts, established a relationship with them, distanced the girls from their parents, and then proceeded to groom them. Perhaps more troubling is the fact that R. Kelly, a serial child predator and general threat to the safety of women, had already faced child pornogrphy charges, as well as a variety of others, from as early as 2002. However, Kelly would continue to exploit, kidnap, and take advantage of underage girls with existing charges for the coming decades.
Even before these child pornography charges were filed, Kelly displayed highly problematic behavior. The singer, for example, infamously married 15-year-old Aaliyah Dana Houghton secretly in 1994. Kelly’s former tour manager later testified that the singer bribed a government employee to attain a fake ID for Aaliyah.The marriage was annulled the following year. Kelly was also sued for emotional distress by his partner of three years, Tiffany Hawkins, in 1996. Their relationship began when she was just 15. In 2001, Kelly was sued again for ‘an indecent sexual relationship’ with a 17-year-old intern. In addition to three other court proceedings in 2002, Kelly faced charges of 12 counts of producing images of child sexual abuse. Police raided Kelly’s Florida home and seized a camera containing child pornography, however, the charges were dropped because of ‘an anomaly in the search warrant’.
In 2008, Kelly was charged with 18 counts of sexual abuse and one of child pornography. Additionally, a 27 minute-long sex tape, depicting Kelly with a minor was submitted as evidence. However, the jury, which consisted of nine men and only three women, stated that they could not be sure that the girl was underage. Despite the fact that other witnesses testified, saying that the girl in the tape was, in fact, underage, Kelly’s defense team argued that the witnesses were trying to achieve notoriety through their testimony. The victim in the tape would not come forward, and, because the jury was not convinced, Kelly was aquitted. As it would appear, no one wanted to be the one to send the R&B legend to prison.
Finally, in 2017, when Buzzfeed published a report, which accused Kelly of running a sex cult in which he held six women against their will, people started to pay more attention. The detailed report outlined the abusive conditions the women were forced to endure. For example, they had their phones taken away, were not allowed to contact family or friends, and were frequently forced to engage in sexual acts without consent. Furthermore, Kelly would dictate when the women could sleep, what they could wear, and even what they could eat. Soon, a wave of women came forward to tell their stories, with some even breaking NDAs they had been forced to sign.
Following the publication of the report, the public and the press were shocked. But they shouldn’t have been. Women and girls had been making accusations against Kelly decades before September’s conviction. Why, then, was almost nothing done?
The New York Times reports that one of the crucial ways in which Kelly was able to evade justice was a strong ‘network of enablers‘ who would cover for the famous singer. Many people within Kelly’s circle, from managers to assistants, knew about the ongoing abuse for years and said nothing. Some actively aided Kelly in his grooming process and protected the singer from negative press.
Others have pointed out that this colossal failure is just a symptom of a larger problem, in which Black women are not taken seriously when they report crimes. All of Kelly’s victims have been Black women. As argued by Tayo Baro in an Op-Ed for The Guardian, because our society does not value the lives of Black women, too many are not taken seriously when they report abuse. The women who came forward were labeled ‘super hustlers’ and ‘superstalkers’ by Kelly’s lawyers. Both terms, Baro notes, are commonly used when victim-blaming Black women.
However, there is hope that the conviction of the star, and the fact that he will actually face prison time, will bring some sense of closure to those abused by Kelly, of which there are many: ‘I no longer have to explain myself’, said Faith Rodgers, now 24. However, Rogers and others are understandably upset that the public and the courts have only recently started paying attention to Kelly’s crimes. Sadly, some of Kelly’s more recent victims were not even alive at the time of his earliest charges. Rogers, for example, was not yet born when Kelly’s manager bribed a government official so Kelly could marry Aaliyah, a minor. ‘I wasn’t even born yet when that happened. This isn’t something that people didn’t know about’, Rogers told The Rolling Stone.
These girls were failed by both the justice system and the public, who were far more eager to defend their idol than listen to and protect young and vulnerable women. It took the justice system 20 years to rightfully punish a man who truly deserved it.