2 more women accuse R. Kelly
Two more women have stepped forward to say singer R. Kelly preyed on them as minors — with one claiming the singer raped her while she was intoxicated.
The friends from Maryland spoke out with their lawyer Gloria Allred in New York Thursday. They said Kelly picked them out of a crowd during a performance at the Baltimore Grand in either 1995 or 1996 and told his security staff to put the girls on stage.
Latresa Scaff said she was 16 at the time. Rochelle Washington was 15.
The women said they were offered alcohol and drugs, despite being underage, and that Kelly invited them to his suite at the Hyatt Regency Hotel Inner Harbor in Baltimore.
Scaff said a man escorted them to the room and said, “R. Kelly is getting ready to enter the room. Pull up your dresses.”
The girls complied, she said.
“Rochelle and I did what we were told,” Scaff explained. “We were standing, and we had panties on underneath our dresses.”
She said when Kelly walked into the room, “his penis was out and was over the top of his pants.”
Kelly allegedly told the girls he was making a video and both could be in it.
“After he said that, he started touching my breasts and vagina,” Scaff said. “He put his hand under my dress.”
She said Kelly made it clear he wanted a threesome, but Washington said no and went to the bathroom.
Kelly and the underage Scaff had sex, she said, while she was drunk and high on marijuana.
“I’m coming forward now because I feel this is the right thing to do,” Scaff said Thursday.
“I am speaking out because I want to encourage other victims who I know must be out there to come forward as well. I want justice for anyone who is a victim of R. Kelly,” she said.
The new accusations come six weeks after the Lifetime documentary series, “Surviving R. Kelly,” took a fresh look at the various misconduct allegations against Kelly over the years.
Kelly’s lawyer, Steve Greenberg, has said his client never intentionally had sex with an underage girl.
Allred called her clients “very courageous” for speaking out.
“For years they were embarrassed about what happened that night, and they were not sure if they should blame themselves for what happened when they were teenagers,” Allred said.
“Now that they are older and have become mothers, they understand that the person who was responsible is the alleged predator, R. Kelly.”
She said Scaff and Washington were going to meet with federal investigators from the Eastern District of New York, who are looking into the singer’s behavior.
“To R. Kelly I am sending this message,” Allred said. “You have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.”
Washington said she’s still haunted by the experience more than 20 years later.
“I just wanted to have fun, and I was excited to meet Mr. Kelly, but as time went by I felt in my heart that I couldn’t ever forget that day,” she said. “I can’t get out of my head what I saw and what happened.”
Kelly, 52, has faced multiple charges, lawsuits and accusations over the last two decades claiming he preyed on and sexually abused young women and girls.
The allegations have included claims he coerced underage girls into sex and brainwashed victims into joining a sex cult.
Best known for a series of hit singles including “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Ignition (Remix),” Kelly married singer Aaliyah in 1994 when she was 15 years old and he was 27, according to a wedding certificate obtained by Vibe magazine.
Aaliyah’s parents reportedly had the union annulled, and the popular singer died in a plane crash in 2001.