This is definitely the last R. Kelly trial post, but the folks over at Panache dug up some interesting information about R. Kelly from years ago (including details of his marriage to Aaliyah) and I can no longer support a sicko. Check em’ out under the cut
1996: Kelly marries Andrea Lee, a choreographer and dancer from his stage show whose nickname within his inner circle is “Puppydog.” The couple will have three children though they are very rarely photographed together in public, and Kelly associates tell the Sun-Times that Andrea is expected to knock before entering any room in their house when her husband is at home. In 2003, Andrea’s mother, grandfather and aunt tell the Sun-Times that they are upset because they are not allowed to visit her at Kelly’s Olympia Fields home, or even to speak to her on the phone.
Dec. 24, 1996: Kelly is sued for $10 million by Tiffany Hawkins, who claims she met the star when he came back to Kenwood Academy to talk to his old mentor Lena McLin’s music class. According to the lawsuit, Hawkins began having sex with Kelly in 1991, when she was 15, and the relationship ended in 1994, when she turned 18. (He would have been aged 24 to 27.) Hawkins’ charges are not reported until years later as part of an investigative story by the Sun-Times.
January 23, 1998: Kelly settles the lawsuit with Hawkins just four days after she gave a seven-hour deposition. Terms of the settlement prohibit Hawkins from talking about the amount, though sources tell the Sun-Times it was $250,000, and she is prohibited from speaking to anyone about her relationship with Kelly. Joavante Cunningham, who worked as one of Kelly’s dancers, later tells the Sun-Times that everything started going downhill for Kelly when he settled with Hawkins: “The brother’s got problems. He definitely has something going on psychologically. He should have learned from the Hawkins case and got some help.” Another woman, a friend of Hawkins’ who was prepared to testify in the case to being involved in a threesome with Kelly and the plaintiff, tells the paper: “I’m not trying to down him, because I honestly think it has to be a sickness. Looking at pictures of me and Tiffany when we were freshmen — boy, we were ugly little girls compared to what he could have had, so I didn’t understand why he did what he did.”
1999: Speaking to the Sun-Times several years later, a Los Angeles woman says she met Kelly in 1999 during the video shoot for “If I Could Turn Back the Hands of Time.” She was 17 years old at the time, though she did not have sex with the star until she turned 18 in 2000. Kelly never told her that he was married, and they began fighting as soon as she found out: “I do believe he does have a problem,” she tells the newspaper. A former Kelly assistant tells the Sun-Times that during this same period, the backstage area at the star’s concerts are often filled with underage girls. “He likes the babies, and that’s the sickness. He can control her and she doesn’t know no any better.”
Early 2000: More than five years after the affair with his niece, Aaliyah, Hankerson resigns as Kelly’s manager. He writes a letter to the star’s attorney that says he believes Kelly needs psychiatric help for his compulsion to pursue underage girls. Hankerson has never spoken publicly about Kelly, but an attorney for Hankerson confirmed the substance of the letter in an interview with the Sun-Times.
Added from Chicago Times & NY Post Article: Aaliyah was 12 when she was first introduced to R. Kelly by her uncle Barry Hankerson. Sources said that a naive young Aailyah had a crush on Kelly, but was caught by surprise when Kelly suddenly arranged the marriage. He took her to a suburban Chicago hotel room for a quickie marriage ceremony. Kelly used a phony marriage certificate that listed her age as 18 and the two were legally hitched. The union was later annulled, and Aaliyah was sworn to secrecy and waived all civil claims against Kelly.
Childhood friends of Kelly tell GQ that he was sexually molested by a “trusted older man from the neighborhood,” which may have contributed to his abusive behavior as an adult.While Kelly’s appetite for young girls was an open secret, if a thief hadn’t stolen a videotape from his gym bag four years ago in Chicago, he might never have been arrested, because none of the underage girls he allegedly had sex with was willing to testify against him.
“The girls Kelly had seduced were more willing to settle than to testify,”
Dec. 21, 2000: The Chicago Sun-Times publishes its first investigative report about what it calls a pattern of R. Kelly abusing his wealth and fame as a pop star to enter into sexual relationships with underage girls. The result of seven weeks of reporting, the story is prompted by an anonymous fax to the paper that reads: “You wrote about R. Kelly [in a review of “TP2.com”] and compared him to Marvin Gaye. Well, I guess Marvin Gaye had problems too, but I don’t think they were like Robert’s… Robert’s problem is young girls… I’ve known Robert for many years and I’ve tried to get him to get help, but he just won’t do it. So I’m telling you about it hoping that you or someone at your newspaper will write an article about it and then Robert will have no choice but to get help and stop hurting the people he’s hurting.”
August, 2001: Kelly is sued by another Chicago woman, Tracy Sampson, a former intern at Epic Records who claims she lost her virginity to the singer at age 17. “I was lied to by him,” she claims in the lawsuit. “I was coerced into receiving oral sex from a girl I did not want to have sex with. I was often treated as his personal sex object and cast aside. He would tell me to come to his studio and have sex with him, then tell me to go. He often tried to control every aspect of my life including who I would see and where I would go.” The case eventually is settled out of court when Kelly pays Sampson an undisclosed sum.
April 29, 2002: Kelly is sued for the third time by Patrice Jones, a Chicago woman who claims he impregnated her when she was underage, and that one of his associates took her to have an abortion. The lawsuit claims the relationship began after Kelly met the girl in December 1998 at the Rock ’n’ Roll McDonald’s in Chicago while she was with her date and another couple on her prom night. The case eventually is settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. The attorney in the case, Susan E. Loggans, is the same lawyer who represented Hawkins and Sampson. She tells the Sun-Times that Kelly also settled with one other girl from Minneapolis before her lawsuit was ever filed.
May 24, 2002: Kelly is sued by yet another woman, Montina Woods, an adult dancer who toured with Kelly’s friend, Ronald Isley. Woods claims she was unknowingly videotaped by Kelly during sex. In the months to come, Loggans tells the Sun-Times that the singer pays additional sums to an unspecified number of other women who threatened to file similar lawsuits; terms of the settlements prohibit her from talking about the specifics.
Oct. 4, 2006: Henry “Love” Vaughn, a Chicago man who says he has been a “mentor and guide” to Kelly since the singer was a teen, files a lawsuit alleging that Kelly attacked him during a party at the star’s Olympia Fields home, and that Kelly reneged on an agreement to pay him for the idea for the song “Step in the Name of Love.” In an interview with the Sun-Times, Vaughn says that on the night of the alleged attack, Kelly’s daughter was dancing at the party: “She was all dressed up with tight jeans and makeup on, a seven year old girl, dancing on top of the pool table. It was ridiculous. She told my lady, ‘I’m having a show next week; when you come, bring $100.’ Nobody would tell this, but I ain’t scared to tell the truth. Shame the devil.” Kelly spokesman Allen Mayer says, “Vaughn’s story is outrageous nonsense.”
- Sources: Ya Heard , Chicago Sun Times, Necolebitchie.com
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