National Post (National Edition)
Prosecutors look into R. Kelly cult allegations
Seeking victims, witnesses to possible abuse
Prosecutors in Chicago and Atlanta are seeking information from any potential victims or witnesses after the airing of an investigative documentary about R. Kelly that detailed allegations of more than two decades of sexual and physical abuse by the R&B singer.
“Please come forward,” said Kimberly Foxx, state’s attorney for Cook County, Ill., in Chicago on Tuesday. “There’s nothing that can be done to investigate these allegations without the cooperation of both victims and witnesses. We cannot seek justice without you.”
The district attorney’s office in Fulton County, Ga., began conducting interviews after the broadcast of Surviving R. Kelly, a six-part series that aired on Lifetime last week, according to the lawyer for a couple who say the singer is holding their daughter against her will.
Gerald Griggs, a lawyer for Timothy and Jonjelyn Savage, said that he was contacted by senior investigators from the district attorney’s office Monday.
A representative for the Fulton County district attorney’s office declined to comment. Representatives for R. Kelly also declined to comment but have said in the past that the women living with Kelly were doing so voluntarily.
Griggs said that he provided the investigators with access to the Savages for questioning, along with additional witnesses.
The television special included accusations, first reported by Buzzfeed last year, that Kelly has been keeping women in a sex cult. The episodes featured numerous women who described being controlled or abused by the singer, often beginning when they were teenagers. It also featured former associates who said they had assisted Kelly with his sexual arrangements, as well as family members, including the Savages, of women who have lived with Kelly.
The Savages say that their daughter, Joycelyn, has been held and mistreated by Kelly, first in an Atlanta residence beginning in 2016, and then in Chicago. She is still believed to be living with him.
A woman who lived with Kelly in the past, Asante Mcgee, described the arrangement in interviews with Buzzfeed and Teen Vogue last year, detailing mental, physical and sexual abuse. She said the women were forced to refer to Kelly as “Daddy” and required his permission to bathe, eat, use the bathroom and move between rooms. A representative for Mcgee said that she had not been contacted by investigators.
Foxx said that, since the broadcast of Surviving R. Kelly — which she called “deeply, deeply disturbing” — her office had heard from two families in the Chicago area who were concerned about their loved ones’ contact with Kelly recently. But she did not confirm any active criminal investigation.
Kelly has denied all allegations regarding sexual misconduct and physical abuse against girls and women. In 2008, he was found not guilty of child pornography charges at a trial in Chicago.
Representatives for the singer said last year: “All of the women targeted by the current media onslaught are legal adults of sound mind and body, with their own free will. Law enforcement officials in Atlanta and Chicago previously have made ‘wellness’ visits to check on the women in question and have found nothing to cause alarm.”
And in a video interview published by TMZ in July, Joycelyn Savage disputed her parents’ assertion that she was being held captive. “I am in a happy place with my life,” she said. “I’m not being brainwashed or anything like that.”
Oronike Odeleye, a founder of the #Muterkelly campaign, called reports of the prosecutors’ interest “absolutely great news.”