I believe I can cry
SOBBING R. KELLY FACING 10 COUNTS OF ABUSE DENIES HAVING SEX WITH UNDERAGE GIRLS
He ranted, raved and painted himself as the victim. And even claimed his much-younger girlfriends' parents handed their daughters over to him.
Sobbing and sometimes standing, R. Kelly was adamant — he's “not a devil.”
In the unhinged interview — his first since being charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse last month — Kelly claimed his accusers are the ones who are lying.
The R&B star, who has faced allegations of sexual misconduct for years, denied during a sitdown with an unflappable Gayle King on “CBS This Morning” that he's ever had sex with someone under the age of 17, and said his character has been dragged by the accusations.
“I have been assassinated,” Kelly said. “I have been buried alive. But I'm alive.”
The singer, who spent multiple days behind bars last month after being arrested in Chicago, gave the interview Tuesday night, just hours before a 10 a.m. deadline to pay $161,663 in back child support to exwife Andrea Kelly.
With headlines about his wild interview still swirling, he was re-arrested Wednesday following a sealed hearing in the child support case, a Cook County Sheriff's spokesman said.
Speaking to King, Kelly blasted the Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” that aired earlier this year.
“If you really look at that documentary, which I'm sure you have, everybody says something bad about me,” Kelly told King. “Nobody said nothing good. They were 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.”
The charges against Kelly stem from alleged incidents involving four different victims, three of whom prosecutors say were underage.
The 52-year-old artist — real name Robert Kelly — grew emotional during his interview with King when he began to argue that it defies common sense to think he'd treat women the way he's accused.
“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, and hold girls against their will, chain them up in my basement and don't let them eat, and don't let them out unless they need some shoes down the street from their uncle.' Stop it,” Kelly said. “Y'all quit playing. Quit playing. I didn't do this stuff. This is not me! I'm fighting for my f--king life! Y'all killing me with this s--t!”
He then stood up, yelling, and needed to be calmed down by his publicist.
“Y'all just don't want to believe the truth,” Kelly declared. “You don't want to believe it.”
Kelly was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008 at the end of a lengthy trial stemming from an accusation that he appeared in a sex tape with an underage girl years earlier.