WITH R. KELLY AND EPSTEIN, IT TAKES A VILLAGE
Shame has its limits, even in Chicago, so there was no way R. Kelly — famous R&B singer and infamous accused pedophile — was going to get the cozy Jussie Smollett treatment.
Not in federal court. And not after Kelly’s recent federal indictments in Chicago and New York on charges he pressured witnesses to change their stories years ago in his Cook County criminal case, and that he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to scoop up child sex tapes in which he had a starring role.
“This investigation is far from over,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Angel Krull said as Kelly’s bond was denied Tuesday. Krull also said prosecutors have three videos showing Kelly’s “sadomasochistic abuse” of a 14-year-old girl.
The indictments against Kelly came just days after the underage sex trafficking indictments against New York financier Jeffrey Epstein. That wasn’t just happenstance, said Jim DeRogatis, music critic, professor, journalist and author of the extensively reported “Soulless: The Case against R. Kelly.”
“What’s obvious now is that it takes a system of people to enable a predator to do his thing for years, for decades,” DeRogatis said on my podcast “The Chicago Way.” “This is not a coincidence that the charges came within a span of a week, against Epstein and Kelly.”
In both cases, it’s clear there were industrious enablers helping predators on their hunt. It takes a village.
The monstrous Roman Polanski liked young girls too. He gave a 13-year-old girl a quaalude and champagne, then raped her in the home of Jack Nicholson. But he was a great director, and Hollywood defended him, giving him standing ovations and awards in absentia. He stayed overseas rather than go to prison in California.
“Hollywood has the best moral compass because it has compassion,” said one of Polanski’s champions. “We were the people who did the fundraising telethon for the victims of 9/11. We were there for the victims of Katrina and any world catastrophe.”
Who was the great Polanski supporter? Producer Harvey Weinstein, who goes on trial in New York after Labor Day as an accused sex predator.
Hollywood, the music industry and politics are each all about selling fantasy, and what we find acceptable in fantasy reveals much about us. In the late 1980s, two movies based on the same story about decadent French nobility — each containing scenes of rape of a 15-yearold girl by an older man — were big hits in America, “Dangerous Liaisons” and “Valmont.” Would such scenes be made today?
While Epstein was a favorite of the wealthy New York elite, numbering former President Bill Clinton, other national Democrats and Republican President Donald Trump among his social contacts, Kelly was a Chicago guy.
He grew up here. He soon became the most influential musician of his generation. And as Kelly became famous for his music, he became famous for hunting 14and 15-year-old girls.
“Nobody cared to stop it because the money was too extensive,” DeRogatis said.
He tried. Then-music critic at the Sun-Times, he teamed up with then Sun-Times reporter Abdon Pallasch to document Kelly’s behavior beginning in December 2000. They did story after story, yet these were largely ignored by other media in town.
Later, Pallasch told me, “When we published our first story about R. Kelly sexually abusing underage teenage girls, we braced for a wave of other news outlets following up … . And we were met with a collective shrug from our fellow journalists. This was before the #MeToo movement. We got, ‘What? It’s news that music stars go for young girls?’”
Some things to watch: How many enablers will be revealed, in politics and media? How will the politics of the local courts — R. Kelly’s acquittal in Cook County and the slap-on-the-wrist Epstein received in Florida — be explained away? And how do the lawyers on both sides play those earlier cases, which authorities say allowed accused child molesters to resume hunting?
DeRogatis said much will be exposed about Cook County and Kelly.
“Because the indictment already brings out that the girl and her parents were bribed. And there are obstruction of justice charges,” he said. “How far will these charges go? And when Kelly’s enablers begin to flip and turn state’s evidence to avoid prosecution themselves, what else will come out?”
I don’t think it’ll be the kind of tune you’d want for your wedding song or your prom.