‘Aaliyah was a sacrificial lamb’: Lifetime’s new ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ series explores aftermath of illegal marriage
FEW close to R&B singer Aaliyah have publicly commented on the interactions she had with R. Kelly. But on Thursday night’s installment of the new Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly - Part II: The Reckoning,” Aaliyah’s former boyfriend, producer Damon Dash, provided a glimpse into Kelly’s impact on the late singer.
Kelly, who produced Aaliyah’s popular ‘Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number’ album, was 27 when he illegally married his 15-year-old protege.
The marriage quickly ended after Aaliyah told her parents, and it was annulled.
The union soon became public knowledge.
Dash, who was dating Aaliyah at the time of her death in a 2001 plane crash, told the Lifetime producers “that was a headline. That was something talked about, like it was normal.”
“She just said he was a bad man, and she left it at that,” Dash said. Aaliyah didn’t want him to know details for fear of how he would react, he added, and “I had to get therapy over that.”
Dash said: “If people would have protected Aaliyah, so many other girls wouldn’t have gotten touched. Aaliyah was the sacrificial lamb for all that, because she didn’t deserve none of that. She’s a good, good soul, good girl, wasn’t even so resentful, like, ‘let that man live but keep him away from me.’ That’s all she wanted. She was just happy to be away.”
Sexual misconduct accusations have followed R. Kelly for years and were explored Lifetime’s 2019 ‘Surviving R. Kelly’ docuseries.
The six-part program, one of Lifetime’s most highly rated in years, sparked renewed interest in the allegations. In the aftermath of the documentary, Chicago prosecutors asked for witnesses or victims to come forward.
The network’s follow-up program, which continues Friday night, comes as Kelly sits in federal custody facing federal sex-crime charges.
Last month, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn accused Kelly of bribing an Illinois official to get a fake I.D. for Aaliyah so that the two could marry.
The charge was added to a federal racketeering indictment against Kelly.
Kelly has long denied wrongdoing, and his attorney, Steven Greenberg, called the new Lifetime program a “onesided, factually unsupported propaganda piece.”
“We look forward to our day in court when these stories will be subjected to the crucible of crossexamination and the scrutiny of one or more juries, and the day R Kelly can again perform for his millions of fans who know the truth,” Greenberg tweeted.
“Surviving R. Kelly: The Reckoning” includes an extensive interview with Tiffany Hawkins, who was the first to file a lawsuit against Kelly in 1991 accusing him of having sex with her when she was a minor.
Faith Rodgers also told producers about the relationship she had with Kelly in 2018 when she was 19. She has since sued him on allegations of sexual battery and “willfully, deliberately and maliciously” infecting her with a sexually transmitted disease.
Those women and other accusers described the threats and intimidation they have endured since going public with their allegations, including online harassment from Kelly’s fans.
Lifetime also interviewed two former employees of Kelly who defended the singer. — The Washington Post