Documentary ‘Surviving R. Kelly’

Documentary 'Surviving R. Kelly'

Samantha Valdez, Opinions Editor

Lifetime released a new six-part series this past weekend called, ‘Surviving R. Kelly.’ Each episode is an hour long and is full of reports from women accusing R. Kelly of sexually assaulting them, not to mention many of these women were underage when the alleged assaults happened. The series also includes comments from R. Kelly’s critics like John Legend and Tarana Burke, who is the founder of the #MeToo movement. Since the first night, the series aired it has been booming on social media. Of course, R. Kelly has denied all of these allegations.

Now R. Kelly’s ex-girlfriends, friends, victims, and their families are speaking out about R. Kelly saying this indeed was a true thing that happened. This isn’t the first time Mr. Kelly has been involved in a scandal, especially with younger women. Back in 1994 when Kelly was 27-years-old, he married 15-year-old R&B singer Aaliyah. On their marriage certificate, however, it said she was 18. Two years later in 1996, he found himself in another scandal – a vocalist named, Tiffany Hawkins sued Mr. Kelly for 10 million dollars. She claimed she and Kelly had first started having sexual relations when she was 15 years old. Tiffany has also said she  “suffered personal injuries and severe emotional harm because she had sex with the singer and he encouraged her to participate in group sex with him and other underage girls.”

One of the biggest scandals to ever happen with R. Kelly happened in February of the year 2002.  A reporter named DeRogatis, who was then a music critic and reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, anonymously received a 26-minute long video which showed R. Kelly having sexual relations with a 14-year-old girl. Allegedly the tape shows R. Kelly telling the girl to call him ‘Daddy’ and him urinating in her mouth. When reporters asked R. Kelly about these accusations he said a few months later Kelly had several charges of child pornography against him. When Kelly went to court for his trial, Jurors said they couldn’t identify the girl in the tape because she didn’t show up to court, even though many people who knew the girl said it was indeed her,  This caused Kelly to be found not guilty of all 14 accounts he had against him.

These are just some of the few scandals that have happened throughout his career and have been premiered on the show. As the show progresses, more and more information will be released which keeps people wondering, what’s going to happen with R. Kelly? Will he be arrested?