Robert Chiarito and Elizabeth A. Harris

Kelly was charged last month with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse and spent a weekend in jail before a woman who described herself as a friend posted $100,000 bond.

It was not immediately clear who arranged for Kelly’s release Saturday. His lawyer, Steven Greenberg, said the person who posted the $161,663 bond wished to remain anonymous.

“I promise you, we’re going to straighten all this stuff out,” Kelly said after he left the Cook County Jail in Chicago, according to television station WSB-TV.

He was taken into custody Wednesday after having appeared in court. He had been ordered last month to pay his ex-wife Andrea Kelly $161,663 in child support. They have three children together.

Kelly, 52, has repeatedly denied the allegations against him, including during a dramatic interview with Gayle King on “CBS This Morning,” which began airing segments Wednesday. He screamed, cried and jumped out of his chair, proclaiming he had done nothing wrong.

Kelly’s former criminal defense lawyer, Ed Genson, told Neil Steinberg, a columnist at The Chicago Sun-Times, that Kelly was “guilty as hell.” Genson represented Kelly as he fought child pornography charges that, after six years of delays, culminated in a 2008 trial. He was found not guilty.

Genson said that he did not think Kelly had “done anything inappropriate for years” because, he said, he sent the singer to the doctor for “libido-killing shots,” according to Steinberg’s column, which was published Thursday.

Genson also said that he had vetted Kelly’s songs and told him to rewrite lyrics that suggested he was attracted to young girls. He said that the song “Ignition,” a brazenly sexual song about a man driving around with a woman, was originally about a high school driving instructor and his students.

Kelly’s current criminal defense lawyer, Greenberg, said “you’d think a legend like Genson would recognize a jury acquitted him and that should be the end of it.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="b217ff2e-e17d-4570-b75d-c50ddaadc5cc" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/arts/r-kelly-released-jail.html">The New York Times</a>.

R. Kelly released from jail for the second time in two weeks

CHICAGO — R. Kelly was released from jail Saturday for the second time in less than two weeks after being taken into custody this week for failing to pay his ex-wife more than $160,000 in child support.

<h1>CHICAGO — Barely a week after he was bailed out of jail while facing sex abuse charges, R. Kelly was taken back into custody on Wednesday for failing to pay his ex-wife more than $160,000 in child support.</h1>

Kelly's return to jail came just hours after the airing of his first interview since he was charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom prosecutors say were underage at the time. He was released last week on a $100,000 bond paid by a friend after several days in which he apparently struggled to come up with the money.

In the interview, with Gayle King of “CBS This Morning,” he was emotional and unyielding. He denied having sex with underage girls and portrayed himself as a victim of a social media-fueled smear campaign.

Kelly, whose real name is Robert Kelly, screamed, cursed and pleaded to the camera.

“Hate me if you want to, love me if you want,” Kelly said. “But just use your common sense. How stupid would it be for me, with my crazy past and what I’ve been through — oh, right now I just think I need to be a monster, hold girls against their will, chain them up in my basement, and don’t let them eat, don’t let them out!”

He continued, directly into the camera and growing tearful: “I didn’t do this stuff! This is not me!”

“I’m fighting for my life!” he said, using an expletive. He jumped out of his seat and became so upset that King paused the interview so he could regain his composure.

On Wednesday, he was back in court, having been ordered last month to pay his ex-wife Andrea Kelly $161,663 in child support, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, about $30,000 less than the total he owes her. They had three children together.

“Surviving R. Kelly,” a Lifetime documentary that aired in January, said that since the couple divorced in 2009, R. Kelly had stopped paying child support on “several occasions.”

“I’m in foreclosure court on my house,” Andrea Kelly said in the documentary. “Why? Robert stopped paying child support as a way to punish me.”

Darryll Johnson, a spokesman for R. Kelly, said the singer arrived in court on Wednesday in “good spirits,” hoping to work out a deal in which he would pay his former wife as much as $60,000. But the court decided that he would have to pay the full ordered amount before he could be released.

“He can’t pay,” Johnson said. “He hasn’t worked in a long time. He just didn’t have the money.”

While Kelly “has some money,” he added, “at the end of the day, he has to live.”

Andrea Kelly’s lawyer said she could not discuss the case, which is under seal.

“Surviving R. Kelly” brought new attention to long-standing accusations that he had mistreated women, reviving prosecutors’ interest in his behavior and leading to his arrest last month.

In his CBS interview, Kelly dismissed the accounts in the documentary.

“Everybody says something bad about me,” Kelly said, referring to the documentary. “Nobody said nothing good. They was describing Lucifer. I’m not Lucifer. I’m a man. I make mistakes, but I’m not a devil. And by no means am I a monster.”

King repeatedly pressed Kelly about the many allegations against him. He gave no ground, and often fired back at his accusers.

When she asked him if he had broken any laws, he responded, “Absolutely not.”

“You can start a rumor on a guy like me or a celebrity just like that,” he said. “All you have to do is push a button on your phone and say: ‘So and so did this to me. R. Kelly did this to me.'”

One of the women he is charged with sexually abusing as minors, Jerhonda Pace, said on Instagram and Twitter that what she saw in the interview “was a man that needs help.”

“For decades he’s been around enablers who never told him the truth” about his conduct, she wrote. “Him believing he’s doing no wrong is no different than an adult telling a child Santa is real.”

According to prosecutors, another of the underage girls was the same one who appeared in a sex tape with Kelly that resulted in a 2008 trial on child pornography charges. The girl did not testify then, and Kelly was found not guilty after his lawyers successfully argued that his identity could not be proved.

In an excerpt from the interview released on Tuesday, Kelly referred to his acquittal, telling King: “You can’t double jeopardy me like that. You can’t. It’s not fair.”

The new charges involving that girl are based on a newly obtained videotape, about two decades old, that came from someone who had once been in contact with Kelly. That person recently gave the tape to Michael Avenatti, the celebrity lawyer, who turned it over to prosecutors.

In the tape, the girl refers several times to having 14-year-old body parts and, according to Avenatti, the acts depicted in the video were different from those at the center of the 2008 case, eliminating any issue of double jeopardy.

King also mentioned that Lady Gaga had recently apologized for having collaborated with Kelly on a song several years ago. Kelly responded: “She’s a very great talent and it’s unfortunate that her intelligence go to such a short level when it comes to that.”

Some of the interview covered allegations separate from Kelly’s criminal case: that he has held women in a kind of sexual and emotional captivity, dictating their every move, including when they can go to the bathroom. The parents of two women now living with Kelly, Azriel Clary, 21, and Joycelyn Savage, 23, have accused him of brainwashing their daughters.

“I love them,” Kelly told King. “It’s like they’re like my girlfriends. We have a relationship. It’s real and I know guys like — I’ve known guys all my life that have five or six women, OK. So don’t go there on me.”

As for their age, Kelly said: “I don’t look at much younger than me. I just look at legal,” and that he was an “older man that loves all women,” regardless of age.

He also said the women’s parents had encouraged them to get close to Kelly to jump-start their music careers. “What kind of father, what kind of mother would sell their daughter to a man?” he said, adding that Clary’s parents had wanted her to have sex with him.

King also conducted a joint interview of Clary and Savage; an excerpt was aired on Wednesday with more to come on Thursday. On Friday night CBS will broadcast a one-hour program with additional segments from the interviews with Kelly and the women.

In an excerpt aired Wednesday, Clary is visibly emotional.

“I’m crying because you guys don’t know the truth,” Clary said. “You guys believe in some facade that our parents are saying; this is all lies for money. If you can’t see that, you’re ignorant, and you’re stupid,” adding several expletives.

Clary’s parents responded on Twitter via Avenatti.

“Azriel has suffered severe mental abuse at the hands of R. Kelly for years,” they said in a statement. “She is also likely suffering from symptoms similar to those found with Stockholm Syndrome. R. Kelly is a liar, manipulator and sociopath who must be brought to justice for his decades of sexual assaults on underage girls. All of these victims and their parents cannot be lying.”

After Savage’s parents held a news conference in Atlanta later in the morning, their daughter called them. According to a television reporter who was there, the parents said it was the first time they had spoken with her in two years.

A few hours later, Kelly was led away to jail once again.

This article originally appeared in <a id="6c53476c-0022-4769-af90-8c5d89ec765f" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/06/arts/r-kelly-jail-child-support.html">The New York Times</a>.

R. Kelly sent back to jail after hearing on child support

In the interview, with Gayle King of “CBS This Morning,” he was emotional and unyielding. He denied having sex with underage girls and portrayed himself as a victim of a social media-fueled smear campaign.

A third victim, prosecutors said, was a girl Kelly met at a restaurant during her 16th birthday celebration. Her mother was concerned about Kelly’s interest, so he helped her navigate around her parents.

According to prosecutors, he instructed the girl to take a cab to his studio after her father had dropped her at school. There, he gave her an envelope with “a large sum of money,” and they began a once-a-month sexual relationship that lasted for about a year.

In revealing details of their case at a bond hearing in Chicago on Saturday, prosecutors portrayed Kelly as a man who repeatedly used his fame to draw girls and women into his orbit and then turned them into targets for his sexual gratification.

After surrendering Friday to face 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four women, three of whom were minors at the time, Kelly, 52, was ordered held Saturday on a $1 million bond. He also had to surrender his passport and was told not to have contact with any of the alleged victims or anyone under the age of 18.

Kelly’s lawyer, Steven Greenberg, said he hoped his client would make bail later Saturday or Sunday.

“We’re happy to turn in his passport,” Greenberg said.

Kelly did not enter a plea, although his lawyer has claimed that the women testifying against him are liars.

Kelly has been through the court system before, in a child pornography trial that stemmed from a video that prosecutors said showed him having sex with, and urinating on, an underage girl. Several witnesses identified her, but the girl refused to testify and Kelly’s lawyers argued that her identity could not be known for certain. He was acquitted on all counts.

Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney, said Saturday that one of the four women in the new cases is that same girl. The documents released Saturday say prosecutors have a new videotape showing the girl having sex with Kelly and making reference to being 14.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/23/arts/r-kelly-bond-court.html" id="d9d2be34-ba3d-34ae-ab55-11b2df3fd234">The New York Times</a>.

CHICAGO — One was a 16-year-old fan who sought R. Kelly’s autograph during his 2008 child pornography trial. Another was his 24-year-old hairdresser. According to documents released by prosecutors Saturday, Kelly grabbed her by the head, tried to force her to perform oral sex and then ejaculated on her, leaving his DNA.

A Fan, a Birthday Girl, a Hairdresser: Prosecutors Say All Were Victims of R. Kelly

After surrendering Friday to face 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four women, three of whom were minors at the time, Kelly, 52, was ordered held Saturday on a $1 million bond. He also had to surrender his passport and was told not to have contact with any of the accusers or anyone under the age of 18.

“We’re happy to turn in his passport,” Greenberg said. Alluding to the song that made Kelly a superstar, “I Believe I Can Fly,” the lawyer added, “Contrary to the song, Mr. Kelly doesn’t like to fly.”

Kelly, whose full name is Robert Kelly, did not enter a plea, although his lawyer has claimed that the women testifying against him are liars. On Saturday, Kelly stood at the front of a packed courtroom in a black hooded sweatshirt and athletic pants, holding his hands behind his back, before he was led away.

Kelly has been through the court system before, in a highly publicized child pornography trial that stemmed from a video that prosecutors said showed him having sex with, and urinating on, an underage girl. Several witnesses identified her, but the girl refused to testify and Kelly’s lawyers argued that her identity could not be known for certain. He was acquitted on all counts.

Kim Foxx, the Cook County state’s attorney, said Saturday that one of the four women in the new cases is that same girl. There is no indication she has changed her mind about testifying, but the documents released Saturday say that prosecutors have a new videotape showing the girl having sex with Kelly and making reference to being 14 years old.

The tape, about two decades old, came from someone who had once been in contact with Kelly. That person recently gave the tape to Michael Avenatti, the celebrity lawyer, who turned it over to prosecutors in Foxx’s office. According to Avenatti, the acts depicted in the tape were different from those at the center of the 2008 case, eliminating any issue of double jeopardy.

The girl who sought Kelly’s autograph during his 2008 trial, identified in the court papers as J.P., matches the description of a woman, Jerhonda Pace, who first told her story publicly in a 2017 BuzzFeed article by music journalist Jim DeRogatis, who has been chronicling accusations against Kelly for nearly 20 years.

According to the documents, she had asked for his autograph and told him she was 16. He invited her to his house in Olympia Fields, a Chicago suburb. Over the course of nine months, she had sex with Kelly multiple times. She told BuzzFeed that she left Kelly after he slapped and choked her during an argument. She had saved a shirt that Kelly had ejaculated on, according to the documents, and turned it over to authorities.

Kelly has been accused several times in the past of sexually abusing underage girls, but he reached settlements with nondisclosure agreements that for many years served as a shield. Pace broke her nondisclosure agreement, according to BuzzFeed, and her account, along with another article describing how Kelly kept women in an apparent sex cult, was the beginning of a fresh round of coverage and public outrage.

Many of the allegations were chronicled last month in a six-part Lifetime documentary, “Surviving R. Kelly,” which emboldened Chicago prosecutors to try to build another case against him.

Pace was in the courtroom Saturday. The day before, after the charges were announced, she made a statement on Twitter:

“To everyone that called us liars and shamed us, keep that same energy. R. Kelly is going down, DOWN.”

Also in the courtroom, looking on from the row reserved for Kelly’s family and friends, were two women, Joycelyn Savage and Azriel Clary, whose presence served as a strong statement from Kelly. Their families have said the women are being held captive by Kelly, but his lawyer has said they are living with him willingly, and local authorities who have conducted checks at the parents’ behest have not found anything illegal with the living arrangement.

Clary’s parents were also in the courtroom Saturday. Their daughter did not acknowledge them.

Another alleged victim, identified in court documents as H.W., met a 32-year-old Kelly at a restaurant in 1998 while she was celebrating her 16th birthday. Prosecutors say Kelly’s manager gave her the singer’s business card with his personal phone number written on it and told her to call him. Her mother, who heard the exchange, took the card away and told Kelly’s manager that her daughter was only 16.

H.W. later removed the card from her mother’s purse and called him.

Kelly told the girl that she should take a cab to his studio after her father dropped her off at school. There, at his studio on North Larrabee Street, they had intercourse and she performed oral sex on him, according to the documents. They had sex about once a month for a year.

The fourth woman in the new cases, identified as L.C., was the only one who was an adult at the time of the alleged crime. She was Kelly’s 24-year-old hairdresser in 2003 when he entered the room with his pants down, according to the documents. He grabbed her head and tried to force her to perform oral sex. She resisted, prosecutors said, but he masturbated, and then ejaculated on her and repeatedly spit in her face.

L.C. reported the event to law enforcement officials and gave them the shirt she had been wearing that day; DNA testing found Kelly’s semen on the shirt. It was not immediately clear Saturday why that case was not prosecuted when it was first reported.

Greenberg, the singer’s lawyer, said that may have been a consensual encounter.

The DNA will be a new piece of evidence that prosecutors did not have in Kelly’s first trial. The culture around sexual misconduct is new, too, in the wake of the #MeToo movement and the continued fallout from abuse by Catholic priests.

Amid a ferocious outcry, Kelly’s record label, RCA, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, dropped him two weeks after the documentary aired. Along with the Chicago prosecutors, their counterparts in Atlanta, where Kelly also has lived, began looking into his conduct; federal investigators in New York are also gathering evidence, although the scope of their inquiry is not clear and Kelly has not been charged outside Illinois.

“I am cautiously optimistic,” said Kenyette Tisha Barnes, co-founder of the #MuteRKelly social media campaign. “The difference between this indictment and the last indictment is that you didn’t have the degree of public pressure to get him convicted in 2008. It was actually the opposite — more people wanted him acquitted.”

An Autograph Seeker, a Birthday Girl, a Hairdresser: Prosecutors Say All Were Victims of R. Kelly

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Robert Chiarito and Elizabeth A. Harris

Articles written by the author

R. Kelly released from jail for the second time in two weeks

R. Kelly sent back to jail after hearing on child support

A Fan, a Birthday Girl, a Hairdresser: Prosecutors Say All Were Victims of R. Kelly

An Autograph Seeker, a Birthday Girl, a Hairdresser: Prosecutors Say All Were Victims of R. Kelly