Damon Dash is speaking out about R. Kelly’s relationship with then-underage singer Aaliyah.
The record executive and former manager of Jay-Z is interviewed in “Surviving R. Kelly, Part II: The Reckoning,” the follow-up series to last year’s explosive documentary detailing sexual abuse allegations against R&B star R. Kelly.
In the first new episode airing on Lifetime, Dash says Aaliyah tried to distance herself from Kelly after their secret marriage when she was just 15. Kelly was recently charged with bribing an Illinois government official in August 1994 to obtain a fake ID for the singer, who was illegally married to Kelly for six months before her parents annulled the marriage in February 1995.
“If people would’ve protected Aaliyah, so many other girls wouldn’t have gotten touched,” Dash says in the new docuseries. “Aaliyah was, like, the sacrificial lamb for all that ’cause she didn’t deserve none of that. Good soul. Good girl.
Kelly, who was 27 at the time, has since pleaded not guilty to the charge, although his former tour manager, Demetrius Smith, has admitted to helping the disgraced artist obtain the fake ID.
Dash, 48, dated Aaliyah for a year until she died at 22 in a plane crash in August 2001. He blames the people who worked with Kelly, as well as the media, for helping cover up and brush aside Kelly’s allegedly predatory behavior.
“I know the whole story,” Dash continues. “I know it was the cover-up and all of that. But how did that cover it up? It just made the conversation, ‘Oh, he married a child?’ That was a headline! That was a rumor. That was something talked about like it was normal. It wasn’t like, ‘Ew, disgusting, you married a (15) year old.’ It was like, ‘Oh, he married Aaliyah?’ “
The first two hours of “The Reckoning” are focused mainly on the response to last year’s Lifetime docuseries, as accusers and their families describe receiving death threats and being intimidated by people allegedly working for Kelly. They also feature detailed accounts from accusers such as Tiffany Hawkins, an aspiring singer who alleges she started having sexual relations with Kelly in 1991, when she was 15, and was told to bring her underage friends to have group sex with him as well.
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