♪
TIA: I was the first girl,
and nobody believed me.
And after that, it continued to happen again...
[sniffling]
...and again
and again.
♪
JOVANTE: We're grown girls,
but we're still little girls that cry silently.
If you weren't there,
you'll never understand it.
♪
[cheering]
-Robert, how do you feel? -Was it you on the tape?
-WOMAN: 14 years old. -WOMAN 2: I met R. Kelly when I was 14.
-WOMAN 3: When I met him, I was 17. -WOMAN 4: 15.
A lot of people saw that pee tape.
It was circulating in the streets.
She was actually 14.
ODELEYE: And he's urinating on her, in her mouth.
REPORTER: Jurors found him not guilty on all charges.
ODELEYE: He was not thought of as guilty,
even though the evidence was there.
TOURE: After R. Kelly got off trial,
I do the interview.
He was very nervous.
Do you like teenage girls?
When you say "teenage,"
h-how old are we talking?
STEPHANIE GOSK: Singer R. Kelly has denied
repeated claims of sexual misconduct,
but now some of his alleged victims are speaking out
in a powerful new docuseries.
REPORTER 2: #SurvivingRKelly was trending
at number one on Twitter during its debut.
The whole thing was eye-opening,
painful, sad, disappointing.
Man, how complicit we all have been.
I was extremely moved by that whole show.
It was-it was very heavy for me.
My only question is,
as we're being so judgmental, we're not saying,
"Yo, that man is sick. -That man needs help.
That man need..." -Nobody gives a [bleep] about that.
If that was your daughter, that [bleep] not sick, he's dead.
We can talk about the cycle of abuse,
but we also have to talk about accountability
and the ways in which America has not held
abusers accountable.
Within days, Kim Foxx, the state attorney,
-holds a press conference. -The recent allegations
against entertainer R. Kelly
in the recent Lifetime docuseries
are deeply, deeply disturbing.
Victims of sexual assault,
please come forward.
Two days after the documentary airs,
he's celebrating at a nightclub.
Hey, y'all [bleep] don't know.
It's my [bleep] birthday, and I don't give a [bleep]
-what's going on tonight. -[cheering]
ODELEYE: RCA dropping him from the label.
Everything in that documentary was a rehash
of things they've known for years,
and everybody rejected it.
REPORTER 3: R. Kelly turned himself in
to Chicago police Friday night.
He is being charged with ten counts of felony sexual abuse.
REPORTER 4: Prosecutors say three of the four alleged victims
were underage.
He's pleaded not guilty.
JERHONDA: I was a part of a suicide pact.
If he was to go to jail,
I was supposed to kill myself.
REPORTER 3: The new charges against Kelly came
after a video surfaced reportedly showing Kelly
having sex with a girl who was 14 years old at the time.
DeROGATIS: The trial in 2008 was reduced
to one girl on one videotape.
But there always was talk of other tapes.
Earlier today,
we handed over a second videotape to prosecutors.
There are multiple tapes, multiple jurisdictions,
and the victim is cooperating with authorities.
It's game, set, match.
-[siren wails] -FAITH: At the premiere,
somebody had called in a gun threat.
ASANTE: People started
DMing me and say, "Count your days."
TIMOTHY SAVAGE: His manager threatened
to kill my whole entire family.
This is intimidation and retaliation.
♪
SEGAR: R. Kelly believes
he can fly
and that he's untouchable.
-WOMAN: Shame on you! -PROTESTORS: Shame on you!
-WOMAN: Shame on you! -Shame on you!
Mute R. Kelly!
PROTESTORS: Mute R. Kelly!
REPORTER 5: R. Kelly has been arrested
on sex trafficking charges.
MAN: Free R. Kelly!
Anybody who goes against him,
they go against you.
JONJELYN: I think the interview
with Gayle King showed how he really is.
You're killing me with this [bleep]!
30 years of my career!
♪
-MAN: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. -R. KELLY: You understand me?
I got a million [bleep] hating me
and 40 billion [bleep] loving me.
-MAN 2: That's right. -You know what I'm saying?
I am handcuffed, like a lot of you [bleep],
I'm handcuffed by my destiny.
♪
It's too late. They should've did this [bleep] 30 years ago.
It's too late.
♪
[lock buzzes]
BRUCE: I know my mama is turning over in her grave.
I, uh...
All I care about is my brother.
I love you, Rob.
Me and Robert, we done been through a lot of things
in our life.
He's still my brother.
Robert can't handle this.
He just can't.
He can't handle... he can't handle this kind of stuff.
Robert is used to hiding with his music.
But there's no music to hide with now.
He can't get to no music now.
To come from nothing,
nothing,
and achieve world acclaim
as a status,
to go full circle, to come to nothing,
that's got to be...
the most horrible thing
anybody could endure.
Especially to come from nothing.
When we moved from the project in the South Side of Chicago,
we moved to 463 East 40th St.
Our entire family
lived in that one building.
My mom, grandmother,
great-grandmother, cousins,
sister, us brothers--
all in this one house.
That address
was really significant in all our lives.
[children chattering]
CAREY: Growing up, as kids, Robert was timid.
He was always scared.
The kids in the neighborhood didn't know Robert.
They only knew me and Bruce,
um, because we was out there playing.
And he didn't come outside.
He stayed in the house and played with his keyboard.
Bruce was the oldest brother, so...
Bruce was the protector.
He was always looking out for Robert.
This place is where we could really remember our childhood,
where we flourished at.
We formed a band.
We kids though. We just kids.
CAREY: Our mama gave us instruments for Christmas.
So, once I picked up the drum set
and I'm making noise, and my older brother,
Bruce, he start playing the bass guitar.
And we was all self-taught. We never went...
took classes or anything for this.
And my mama was a great,
phenomenal singer.
That's where Robert get the voice from.
The moment that he opened his mouth and sang,
we all knew that he was special.
And we're looking at this frail-bodied kid,
like, "Where's that voice coming from?"
We doing all these songs and stuff.
We doing these at school.
We doing 'em on the back porch.
And they marveling at us.
You know?
That building where we practiced at--
there was a man living on the third floor.
His name was Eli Henry.
He had to be 60-something years old then.
CAREY: Mr. Henry was the neighborhood uncle.
Everybody loved him and looked up to him, you know?
And he used to go to the f... to the farm.
He would go out to... way out to the farm and get apples
and oranges and cherries
and bananas and things like that
and bring it back to, you know, the-the neighborhood and stuff.
So we just thought he was a cool old man.
Nice guy.
BRUCE: And then he started
buying usstuff.
You know what I'm saying? Buying us things and stuff.
You know, back then,
I didn't think about it,
because I was a child.
There's no demographic that you can name
that has not been touched by sexual violence.
And people don't realize that the relationship
between perpetrator and survivor
is a-is a tricky one, oftentimes.
'Cause most people know their perpetrators, right?
And so we make a decision about our personal safety,
to put our personal safety in jeopardy
for the safety of these men.
There was ugliness, there was pain,
there was sexual abuse in Kelly's upbringing,
starting at age eight through age 14.
It was either a friend of the family or somebody...
A "play uncle" is how it was described to me.
I have empathy.
I think everybody would.
In 19 years of reporting this story
at the Chicago Sun-Times and then at BuzzFeed
and then at The New Yorker,
and everybody I've interviewed
who knows about sexual abuse says,
often, the victim becomes the defender of other victims.
Most often.
And, occasionally,
the victim becomes a victimizer.
Is that what happened with Kelly?
CAREY: Robert knew Mr. Henry
before me and Bruce did.
And one day, me, Bruce and Robert,
we went over his house
and we sitting there.
And we said,
"Mr. Henry, why you ain't got...
You-you gonna put your clothes on, Mr. Henry?"
He-he was in his-in his, like, boxers or whatever.
But when he turned around,
he had pulled his-his private part
out of his underwear
and was holding it in his hand.
Me, Bruce and Robert ran over each other
trying to get out the house.
I'm running, Robert grabbing me, pulling me back,
and I'm grabbing him pulling him back.
Bruce grab... We was, I mean, we literally
fought for our lives to get out that house.
And we could hear Mr. Henry,
"Don't tell nobody."
He did identify the man that abused him.
He said, I was so afraid 'cause I was so little.
He would take me out in the field and he told me,
"Robert, you can't tell anybody.
Otherwise I'm a cooked goose."
It was so heartbreaking because you're hearing
a grown man speak as if
he was still six, seven, eight years old.
BRUCE: One day Robert ran home.
Mr. Henry had Robert come upstairs and he, uh,
he-he tried some inappropriate things with Robert.
Okay. My mother called the police.
CAREY: The police came through
and there's a lot of guys in the neighborhood
and they end up jumping Mr. Henry, beating him,
beating him till blood came everywhere
until the police got there.
When the police got there,
they act like that they wasn't even there.
They just turned their back
and let the guys finish beating him
before they took him off to jail.
I'll never forget that.
Mr. Henry bonded out
and was able to bribe my mom.
Gave my mom $5,000
for her not to come to court.
And she didn't come to court.
I don't have any ill will
for my mom because I know she was struggling, but
if it had been my child...
I don't think no amount of money,
no amount of money
would've made me not prosecute that dude.
Simple and plain.
I probably would've had to prosecute him
to get him off the streets so I couldn't get to him.
You do something like that to my child.
For years and years,
I thought that I was dreaming.
My brother Carey started saying things,
and then Robert starts saying things.
He starts saying things in his song.
Um... "I Admit."
♪ I admit a family member touched me♪
♪ From a child to the age 14.♪
He says I admit that he'd been touched till he was 14.
Mr. Henry was like, that's one thing.
That's one thing, but...
there was some-someone else, too.
There was someone else. Um...
We were kids.
It was, uh...
I can't do this.
DeROGATIS: I think I'm probably
the world's foremost scholar of R. Kelly interviews,
audio and definitely video.
I had to be, in order to figure out
what he had said and how he had changed certain stories.
And, of course, there's the Tavis Smiley interview.
TAVIS SMILEY: At eight or nine years of age, you talk in the book
about how exposed you were to sex.
There were adults who were coming on to you,
even when you were a child.
What'd that do to you,
to be exposed to sex at that early age?
I really think it's a generational curse.
Because as I grew up I would ask
a whole lot of people that I had met.
Had they ever been? You know, and they would say,
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I have."
And, yes,
I was molested when I was a, uh,
from seven on to maybe 13, 14 or something like that,
uh, by people in my family.
BRUCE: Mr. Henry was one thing,
but...
there was someone else, too.
The person that did it is not that much older than we are.
Was just a kid herself.
She was just a kid.
I was six years old when it first happened.
I was six years old.
And she... pushed me down on the bed,
and, um...
and-and she start, like...
unzipping my pants and stuff and, um...
You know, and I'm crying,
and I'm begging her to please stop doing that
because I don't feel right.
I don't feel right, um...
And then she climbed on top of me.
I would make believe
that I was somewhere else playing with my friends
or I would say I'm at the park.
Doing things that kids supposed to be doing at that age.
You know?
That was just with me, but then there would be times
that she would make Robert stay in the house.
I remember one time hearing Bruce
and Robert talking about girls.
Bruce said, uh, "Robert, man,
you ain't, you ain't never had no girl."
He said, "Uh-huh.
"Uh-huh, and I have."
And he said it proud.
I think, I think he enjoyed it.
You know how a parent be able to tell
that their child is out there having sex,
'cause they're getting smart at the mouth.
They think they know it all now.
And it happens all of a sudden, you know?
It's not no thing that builds up overnight.
I think it affected him in more ways than we,
than we all know.
The things that happened to me and Robert was just
a surreal situation, where I felt like,
"Oh, my God, I just want to die."
Robert's sexual life
and the way that he turned out today to be...
For a man to molest my brother
and [bleep] to molest him--
that changed the game.
I never thought of it like that until now.
Sexual abuse at a really early age,
especially from a family member, can be really confusing.
This thing that's happening to me feels good.
It's happening from a family member, which is wrong,
and it's happening at an early age,
which I know it's wrong, but it feels good.
Someone who struggles with that type of trauma at an early age
would be really confused about what sex is,
what the rules around sex are, and how should I
live a sexual life?
What are the appropriate boundaries around sex?
BRUCE: We lived there on
40th Street. That place had a impact on our lives
so much, Robert named a tour after it.
60653 Tour.
That's... [stammering]
Wow, I...
Mm, mm, mm.
The link between being a victim
and being a perpetrator
can be overstated at times. There are many people
that don't go on to perpetrate sexual violence
that have experiences of child sexual abuse.
What we do know is that
for many people that are sexual perpetrators
and sexual abusers, they do have that experience
in their childhood.
When we look back into their pasts,
we see moments where they felt very vulnerable.
They felt helpless.
When you start to peel away the layers
and start to look at their lives and how they got here,
some of their patterns of control and abuse
make sense in the context of what they experienced.
You think about a child who was sexually abused
at an early age, they've lost all control
of their own body, of what happens to them,
of their own feelings.
So someone who was abused at an early age,
um, can have a lifelong struggle
of trying to regain control.
I remember one time
when we was just sitting in his room talking,
like brothers and...
And he had a, uh,
he had a poster of his self
on the back of his door.
And the poster was 12 Play.
The album.
And he say,
"Man, that [bleep] right there--
"he a [bleep].
He powerful, man. He powerful."
I'm, like, "What? W-What are you talking about?"
He said, "Dude, man.
Dude that's on that poster."
I said, "Rob, you mean you?
The picture of you?" He said, "No, man, R. Kelly, man."
He was talking about his self
as if it wasn't him.
I said, "Rob, what you mean, man?"
"You know, he, he-he a whole different person, man."
He say, "He be making me do [bleep]
I don't-I don't want to do."
And he was crying when he saying it.
I'm getting emotional,
because I'm, like,
my brother is really, really hurting.
He... [stammers]
Now I'm starting to really look at it, like,
he probably believed that whatever R. Kelly say,
Robert has to do.
If there's some truth to this, of-of this
name or whatever this entity is he's saying
that controls him,
beyond his control,
then that's the problem.
There was a pastor,
a lady pastor
that Robert was in tune with.
He used to call her for spiritual advice
and so forth,
and one day, he called this pastor up
and had this pastor come to the house.
He told me, "Let her in.
"Take her to the Jacuzzi room
and I'll be there." I said, "Okay."
When the pastor came, I escorted her
to the Jacuzzi room, I called Robert. "Pastor's here."
I was getting ready to leave because he wanted
to talk to her. He said, "No, Bruce,
I want you to stay."
So, he start crying.
He start crying tears
telling this woman that, "I have a problem.
I-I look at those videotapes,"
and he was pointing to the closet with,
it's a-it's a... it's a closet,
like a walk-in closet with shelves full of videotapes.
And he was telling the pastor,
"I look at those videotapes
and I... and I [bleep] off."
He was, like...
asking for help.
Like, "I have a problem."
You know? I... That's the...
only time I think that Robert...
admitted that he has a problem.
I think it's a sexual problem.
A sexual addiction.
And...
any type of disease, of addiction
is only out to do one thing:
seek, kill and destroy everything
that's any good in your life.
That's what it's after.
So, if you don't... if you don't admit to it
or-or admit that you have a problem,
that's the road that you're on.
You're on the road to destruction.
You know?
[sniffles] I wish I was a...
I wish I could kind of turn back the hands of time and tell...
a-and pound it into Robert
to get help, to get some help,
like he used to pound into me to get help.
I still love you, bro.
I still love you.
And I'm-I'm gonna still be there for you.
♪
I cannot
just lay down and forget about Joanne Kelly's son.
LEMIEUX: There's this renewed public interest
in what has been happening.
For all the folks that are like, "We get it now.
We're sorry. We're changing. We're not listening to him,"
there are still a lot of people
that haven't had that moment yet.
I don't know if R. Kelly did it or not.
That ain't my business. I ain't judging.
But I'm just saying, those parents
shouldn't have let that go that far.
K. MICHELLE: I seen mothers in the kitchen cooking,
managers, people all around.
So you're not gonna put me back there up in the fire,
to go and be the face, you know,
for some women who half their parents knew.
There were parents who knew about these allegations,
and they also were starstruck
to know that their daughter was going to work for R. Kelly
or possibly get a music deal.
HUGHLEY: It's not unbelievable that some parents would put
their kids in that situation.
It's not unbelievable at all.
♪
The blaming of the parents, to me,
felt a little too facile and a little too easy.
Um, the fact that people came on camera
and knew that they could be judged in that way
and still wanted to tell their stories to save their children
is something I think that you have to be credited for.
The parents of R. Kelly survivors
get the worst of it all, I believe.
Um, I think that, even people who very much believe
that R. Kelly is guilty and should be brought to justice
a lot of times add the addendum:
"And the parents should go to jail, too."
And the judgment that they get is horrific.
At the time, of course they were not making decisions
that they thought meant, "I'm not gonna see my child
"for the next two, three years.
"My child's gonna miss birthdays and funerals,
and is gonna be abused and exposed to venereal diseases."
Of course they were not making these decisions
with that thought in mind.
CHARLES: My name is Charles Rodgers
and this is my wife Kelly Rodgers,
and we're the parents of Faith Rodgers, who was involved
with Mr. R. Kelly.
NORAH O'DONNELL: A woman is suing
singer-songwriter R. Kelly for allegedly
failing to disclose a sexually transmitted disease.
She also accuses him of sexual battery.
REPORTER: Faith Rodgers says that she was in a relationship
with R. Kelly when she was 19
for nearly a year before leaving.
I wanted to make sure that I'd done my best as a father,
because I really didn't have a father.
[indistinct chatter]
However, I did know what was right from wrong.
And, uh, I-I thought
that I-I knew how to teach my children.
CHARLES [on video]: Faith. Faithy-waithy.
You have kids
and-and you love them
and-and, you know, they're beautiful.
Uh, when they're little and they're babies,
they're pretty, you hold them. You know...
T-That little girl that I used to rock.
I remember rocking Faith and I-I'd have
tears in my eyes because I was so grateful.
She was such a beautiful creation.
CHARLES: Faith. You talking for the camera?
-KELLY RODGERS: Can you say "dada"? -CHARLES: I had no idea
that one day, sh... this would happen to us.
I'm a pastor.
While raising my kids in the beginning, I was very strict.
We didn't allow secular music, we didn't allow our children
to have girlfriends and boyfriends in high school.
We just tried to teach her good,
moral Christian values.
The same things that we try to practice in our lives.
WOMAN: Wow, you guys are beautiful.
KELLY RODGERS: We sheltered them,
but in the process of the sheltering,
I informed my daughters of everything.
What type of men to stay away from.
I tell them, "Look at your dad.
"Look at your dad.
"This is the type of man you want in your life.
"You know, you want a man that's gonna love you and cherish you
"and honor you and respect you.
"Share your dreams and share your visions.
"Not a man that's gonna control you.
"Not a man that's not gonna allow you to be you
"and-and share, you know, your-your dreams
and your hopes and your desires."
I've always taught my daughters that.
CHARLES: I remember the night
that Faith went to the R. Kelly concert with her sister.
Somebody came out between a break or something
-and-and offered her, uh, -Her and her sister...
bracelets and-and were told Mr. Kelly wanted them
to come to the after-party to meet them.
Of which they did. Met him backstage.
And once things settled down and they were about to leave,
somebody slipped a number to h... to her.
And I remember Faith, you know, that night
when she told me what had happened, and I said,
"Don't you dare call him." And she was like,
"Ooh, Dad, no, I would ne... Dad, ew.
-"He's twice your age." -"That's nasty.
"He's-he's your age," you know,
and t-that was her reaction.
FAITH RODGERS: I lied to my parents
the whole time that I was involved with him.
Um... say I'm going to a friend's house,
really be out of town.
KELLY RODGERS: After Faith
ended her relationship with Robert Kelly,
she begin to tell me, "Mom, I-I need to talk to you and Dad
about something that's very important."
It was hard for her to tell us. I could see that.
She said she had been lying to us.
On the weekends when we thought she was with her girlfriend...
It was unbelievable. We were-we were shocked.
I was just totally blown away. I was very angry.
-I trusted her. -Right.
And I believed that she-she wasn't, uh,
seeing him or hadn't seen him.
Uh, you know, we had no idea.
My relationship with R. Kelly had costed me
my confidence, my respect,
my love for myself.
Seeing his personality flip was enough for me.
Just little things like,
"Send me a picture of what you're wearing"
to "Tell me where you live,"
To "Tell me everywhere you go outside of where you live,"
to "I want the address to that place."
It really took a lot out of me.
His energy, at times, it would just be really dark,
to the point where I couldn't even look at him in the eye.
You don't know how to read a person like that.
And you also realize that they're unpredictable.
So you don't want to make them upset,
you don't want to do anything to make them mad.
On May 22, 2018, when Faith Rodgers
comes, uh, public, uh, that she's suing R. Kelly
for, uh, passing on a sexually transmitted disease,
unlike many of the lawsuits that I had covered
in the '90s and the 2000s,
this is instant news everywhere.
This is exhausting because it's another R. Kelly story,
and it's always the same things.
Other news organizations are taking this seriously.
As with the case of the first Harvey Weinstein accusers,
the floodgates kind of opened and other women come forward.
Kitti Jones and Asante McGee both say
they had relationships with R. Kelly.
FAITH: Prior to the documentary airing,
my attorney Gloria Allred-- she had received a letter
and it was already a threatening letter,
and it had pictures of me.
It had said
that I needed to abandon
these heartless efforts of trying to ruin his career.
Um, it said that he would have ten men
that were gonna come and talk about my-my sex life
or that they have had sex with me.
So at that point, I felt like you were
just trying to manipulate me
and the fact that you would go that far
and send pictures to my attorney of me nude,
you just validate everything I'm saying about you.
His version of controlled damage is damaging other people.
He's trying to fix his image, so "I'm gonna ruin yours, Faith."
REPORTER: Backed by famed attorney Gloria Allred,
the 21-year-old unveiled a threatening letter
allegedly written by Kelly last October.
GLORIA ALLRED: Mr. Kelly appears
to have been engaging in a campaign
of intimidation and retaliation.
Often in the past, many victims were fearful
of coming forward against the powerful.
Now I think we see a power shift in many cases,
where the person with the fear...
is the rapist.
Or the person who sexually assaulted or abused,
uh, a child.
I had been getting, like, texts through my mom's phone.
I had changed my number but I had been getting texts
from a weird Chicago n-number and it was like,
"Pull the plug or you'll be exposed."
There's plenty of history of threatening witnesses.
First week of January 2001,
the day after I received the videotape,
someone had shot out the front porch window.
Two years after that, I got a call at home.
"We know you have a six-year-old daughter."
Someone, I would imagine,
who has some allegiance to him,
uh, if not being him,
they're trying to silence, uh, these survivors,
these storytellers,
um, this project. Making the threat--
i-it sends a message, right? It says,
you know, "I can still control you.
"I can still change things for you.
I still have power of your life."
We've had to move since this-this ordeal.
CHARLES: We just felt like
-it was in our best interest to move. -Safety reasons.
After Faith, uh, went public,
we began to, um,
get threats.
Then my wife received some phone calls and...
He knew our address,
and we end up having to put cameras
just circulating all around the house.
I remember one of Faith's friends coming to the house
to see Faith, and he ran in the house and he was like,
"They're snapping pictures, they're snapping pictures.
"They're on the side of the house
in a all-blacked out car."
And we run outside, but they drove off.
You know, so you're just... they're just... you're paranoid.
KELLY RODGERS: It's not easy.
-When Faith leaves the house... -You know, it's not easy.
Even with her friends,
we're on total edge.
We can't sleep, we're just, like, you know,
it's-it's almost torture,
worrying about her.
I can recall when we were
in New York at the premiere.
[indistinct chatter]
LEMIEUX: You know, I had a lot
of anxiety about watching them
watch themselves on camera.
So many of these people who did speak on camera
are meeting for the first time.
That had to be, uh, an incredible experience
for all of them, to realize they'd never been alone,
uh, they'd never connected,
and now they're connecting.
When I met all of the survivors in December,
none of these ladies I knew prior to this.
Knowing we shared some similarities
or some similar stories and just trying to,
I guess, kind of make a connection with everybody.
So it starts, and you see me,
and we're, like, oh, you know.
And then you start, we start listening to Robert's story.
And then the mood really changed.
LEMIEUX: We're seated, taking all this in,
and one of the organizers of the event
comes in very calmly and says,
"Hey, everyone, uh, we're so sorry,
"but, unfortunately, there has been a threat,
and we're gonna have to go."
BURKE: The producers
and some security personnel from the venue come in
and tell us that we have to evacuate immediately.
I was scared for my life.
[siren wails]
Somebody had called in a gun threat.
[siren wails]
In an era of mass shootings,
there's still a level of terror that you can't help but to fear.
We go outside and-and who are we gonna be met with?
And how far are folks willing to go to stop these women
from telling their stories?
But more than anything,
my heart broke for the survivors.
The tensions were high. People were arguing and fighting,
and people were, you know, scared,
and people were trying to figure out how to get out of there.
It was just a lot of chaos, and immediately,
the first thought that came to everybody is that
R. Kelly did this.
LISA: I just made a mad dash to the van.
And that's when I knew, like, something powerful
is in this documentary
and someone's trying to make sure it's not ever seen.
-Mute R. Kelly. -Mute R. Kelly.
That's right. That's right.
-Mute R. Kelly. -ALL [chanting]: Mute R. Kelly!
Mute R. Kelly! Mute R. Kelly!
It might scare a couple of people. If a couple people
get scared, a couple more people might get scared.
It was a last-ditch,
um, desperate act
to not have the-the survivors do any more press,
to kind of just shut it down when it comes to that
and not have them supported any further.
I just literally just started crying.
In my mind, I'm thinking that Lifetime
is not going to air it because of the threats.
They fear for they safety, our safety, or whatever.
So I, like, you know, I really, I just cried so much.
[overlapping chatter]
After we were all, um,
evacuated from the location, we all went back
to the hotel.
I walked downstairs,
and this young lady is sitting on the couch,
and she goes,
"Hello, Miss Rodgers."
And I said, "Hello, who are you?"
And she said, "Who I am doesn't matter,
"but I want you to know that I got, um, videos
of your daughter on my phone with R. Kelly."
And I said, "Oh, really? Well, send them to me."
At this point, my mind is like, "Let me go see where Faith is,"
because it was already, anxiety was high
from being rushed out of the premiere.
By the time I had gotten to the room,
somebody had already
sent Faith a text saying,
"I have video of you.
Come meet me."
I was afraid of the videos and pictures
that he had of me.
So after the premiere, at the hotel,
I kind of just took matters into my own hands.
And I'm hearing her on her phone in there guiding her,
and I'm trying to keep up with her.
And they're telling her, "Well, I'm in this car over here.
Come get in this car."
And I'm, like, screaming,
"Faith, you're not getting in nobody's car.
"We don't know who these people are.
"We don't know what they may have.
"We don't know what's going--
You're not meeting them in they car."
And, you know, she's in hysterics. "Mom,
I need to see what this video is."
I said, "Well,
tell them to meet us in Applebee's."
FAITH: I ended up sitting down, um,
with this employee, their security guard, my mom,
and, at the time, I'm not even think-thinking like,
"This is somebody who works for him.
Like, you could really be setting yourself up."
And the gentleman, he was her bodyguard,
he proceeded to, like, move his jacket over,
and I could see that he had a gun.
She wasn't hiding the fact that she worked for him.
She kind of had, like, this weird smirk the whole time,
like everything was a joke to her.
Her only reason for being there, like she said,
"I'm here to let you know what's gonna be put out about you."
And she didn't say how or when.
I feared, though, this whole time being exposed.
KELLY RODGERS: This woman, she had content
in her phone with her and Robert Kelly.
She proceeded to tell Faith,
"Here's the content, all right?"
And she began to tell Faith, "Well, it's gonna air
soon, right?"
Faith slid the phone back.
Faith's like, "I'm not worried about that," and she left.
FAITH: I'm epileptic.
I have a few triggers that set off my seizures,
but, um, it's really stress.
It's not just, "Oh, I'm stressed out, I'm having a seizure."
It has to be something really, like, life or death, obviously.
I can't really describe any emotion I felt at that moment
besides, like, rage.
I was like, "This is [bleep] up,
"but if you're that [bleep] up, and this is what you got to do,
do what you got to do. I don't give a [bleep]."
It took a lot out of me that night, uh,
emotionally, phy-physically, and spiritually.
I took... Yeah, it took a lot out of me that night.
KELLY RODGERS: I can recall this woman asking me,
"What do you want from Robert Kelly?"
And I looked at her and I told her,
"Robert Kelly, at this point,
needs to fall off the face of the Earth."
And I walked off, um,
ran behind Faith.
By the time she got up the steps, she had a seizure.
DeROGATIS: I was reporting
many of these stories for 19 years.
But the power of television
to make people feel as if they met these women.
So many of these-these people who I'd talked to
and I'd had these experiences,
but not all of America had, and now
people were hearing these women firsthand tell their story.
I think that had an incredibly powerful impact.
REPORTER 1: Surviving R. Kelly was trending at number one
on Twitter during its debut.
And this new documentary has been getting a lot of attention.
I don't think it's appropriate for anyone to be playing
R. Kelly songs anymore. I think he's cancelled.
It's difficult, but I think that it is needed.
It's saving lives. It's changing lives.
That's still my father.
Um, it's a very hard situation to digest and even process.
REPORTER 2: Calls to investigate the 52-year-old were reignited.
Whatever justice need to be done
to R. Kelly, that need to get done.
The world just, like, was shook.
Everybody was calling me wanting to talk,
and I'm like, "This is not
"a celebration. We just,
"we are exploiting our business,
embarrassing moments."
I think that the documentary was a perfect storm
because it was time.
These were victims who got to tell their stories,
and their stories were so compelling,
and their stories were so alike.
It was the same M.O. over and over and over.
These young women spoke for a lot of people.
If they're the ones who came forward, can you imagine
how many girls did not come forward,
but they knew that this went on?
So I think it was a perfect storm. It was time.
Watching Surviving R. Kelly,
I think, made a lot of people realize
that it wasn't just rumors.
In addition, I think what we learned
is that it wasn't R. Kelly acting by himself.
It would be impossible for him to manage to do everything
that he was doing with his career without the help
of managers, drivers, security,
people around him, publicists enabling him.
I feel like it was, like, that first episode, you know,
I caught it On Demand or something,
and we're watching in the bed, and I just, you know,
I was getting tight.
I was with Aaliyah, so I knew
exactly what went on,
and, you know, my thing was always
I didn't understand why it took so long.
He was finally dropped--
without any comment,
without taking any responsibility--
by his label.
Sony has still not commented on, uh, R. Kelly.
They're, however, happy to continue to sell his records.
The thing that's different about R. Kelly
is he's actively doing this stuff.
And so the idea of him
losing his record contract or not h--
you know, people supporting him and playing his music
gives him revenue,
and the more revenue he has, the more resources he has.
He puts those resources into doing
the things he was doing to these girls, so you can
"Step in the Name of Love" all you want to,
but you have to do that knowing that every step you take
puts a dollar in this man's pocket.
What is he gonna do with that money?
When RCA finally came forward in saying that they were, you know,
basically dropping him from the label,
that was such a huge moment.
Not only are you taking money out of his pockets,
but you're taking money out of his bodyguard's pockets
and his assistant's pockets, so he was very worried.
When you start messing with somebody's money,
crazy jumps out.
MITCHELL: TheSurviving R. Kelly
documentary really touched a nerve
in Chicago in a different way.
They saw that he was going down.
That this is not something that he's gonna be able
to sing his way out of.
That this was the story.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM: There were folks
who ignored these issues before
and who could not help but see
exactly what he had been guilty of this whole time.
On the contrary, I also saw many black people
decide that this was a targeted attack against R. Kelly.
That this most vulnerable group, you know, the survivors,
have to deal with backlash.
And it's just, the fact that there's anything towards them,
it-it just reminds me that R. Kelly
is a member of a protected class.
People started DMing me and say, "B, count your days."
I moved out of Illinois because they tried to physically harm me
twice at Orland Mall.
One of the cashiers recognized me
and she started asking me questions,
and somebody that was standing in line behind me
started getting mad and was like, "So this the bitch
from the docu? This the Sherhondabitch?"
There was two other girls with her,
and they was like, "Yeah, we're about to beat
this bitch ass in the parking lot."
When they left, me and my daughters,
we went back to the other side of the store
and we went out the other doors.
And I just loaded them up very quickly and we left.
FAITH: It definitely was, like, a lot of just
nasty... all type of hate.
Hate-texting, phone calls.
Uh, I had to change my number.
To put yourself out there
and then to be mistreated and bullied and called a liar...
How could people be so cruel? You have all of this evidence.
You see all of this stuff dated back to the '90s,
and you want to attack me and tell me all of this?
I shut down. I didn't want to leave my house.
I didn't want to do anything. I just, I just wanted to sleep.
It-- Sleep everything away and just hope
that it would be a different outcome when I woke up,
and it wasn't.
It didn't stop.
It hasn't stopped.
Too often in our society and in culture, we blame the victim.
And we look to them and we say, "But why didn't she do X"
or "Why didn't she do Y?"
Rather than, "Why's he doing X?"
and "Why's he doing Y?"
And we drop him-- normally-- out of the conversation
and we focus on our attention on the victim.
FAITH: The first three months after the documentary,
I gained, like, 30 pounds.
Like, I was stress eating.
I had days, like, probably the worst days,
where I was just looking at the phone, like,
"Everything they think about me must be true, because...
look at me."
I felt like nothing.
I wasn't known as Faith anymore.
I'm known as the girl who slept with R. Kelly.
It can be devastating and disappointing to us
to learn something about somebody we care about
that is so disconnected with how we see them.
What becomes problematic is that instead of
sitting with that discomfort,
we deny, we don't believe people's accounts,
no matter how much evidence is accumulating,
because it disagrees
with a preset notion that we have created.
[chanting]: Lifetime is lying!
WOMAN [chanting]: Women lie, too!
MAN: Women lie, too!
-WOMAN: Women lie, too! -Women lie, too!
ANGELO CLARY: So now it ain't a thing
of what the crime is, it's a thing of,
"You're saying something about R. Kelly,
so we're gonna say ten things about you."
R. Kelly has a team that, they are ordered by him
to destroy whoever is fighting against him.
I've never, ever, ever been in a situation like this.
Anything to destroy your credibility,
this is what they do.
Hi, I'm, uh, Lindsey Perryman-Dunn,
and I worked for R. Kelly
between the years 1999 and 2007.
I started out as his studio manager.
Moved up to personal assistant and then his general manager.
The women that I saw in the docuseries
were the type of women that Robert would've picked.
And you know what they're upset about?
It's that they didn't get
the limelight until they were
on Lifetime television.
During my working position with Robert over eight years,
we brought on my sister for about a year.
JEN EMRICH: When the docuseries aired,
nobody wanted to listen to me and-- unless I, uh,
unless I said something bad about R. Kelly
'cause that's the popular thing to do.
What worked was, for me, to go onto social media
and use the hashtags.
#RKelly. #UnmuteRKelly.
#RKellz, with a "Z."
It started a whole movement.
It worked. Thank God.
It worked. It did, it worked.
KELLY RODGERS: After
we were in New York at the premiere,
Robert Kelly's people began to expose women one by one.
Then they stated, "Faith Rodgers
is gonna be next."
And I can recall
my daughter Jada at school, calling me from school,
just hysterical...
...that it was actual pictures up on the social media
about her sister.
I can recall when we were in New York at the premiere.
Robert Kelly's people began
to expose women one by one.
One day, they began to say, "I'm-a expose Asante McGee."
They put information about her.
The next day it was information up about Jerhonda Pace.
Then they stated,
"Faith Rodgers is gonna be next."
And I can recall my daughter Jada calling me from school,
just hysterical...
...that it was actual pictures up on the social media
about her sister.
FAITH: Two hours after the documentary aired,
there was a Facebook page,
um, there was an Instagram page,
and they were full of my nude pictures.
ASANTE: They putting everybody on blast,
and of course, who name's comes up? Asante McGee.
They pull out my mugshots. Yes, I was arrested.
I was not convicted.
It's like, they trying to bring me to the point
where they just waiting to get that news and say,
"Survivor Asante McGee is dead from suicide."
I feel like that's where they want me at.
FAITH: It was a whole page that was created.
It wasn't just harmful towards me.
It was towards everybody who was involved in the documentary.
JEN EMRICH: Surviving Lies.
As far as being part of that, I certainly coached Rob
to speak out because Rob is not a fighter.
And so that's why this has gone so far.
I do not know personally who put Surviving Lies together,
but I am aware of Surviving Lies.
And I definitely support that. [laughs]
I feel that a victim of any crime needs to call 911.
If you are, have been raped or victimized,
you need to go to the emergency room immediately.
You need to seek medical help, you need to see a psychologist,
you need to get an attorney involved.
You need to sue, you need to take l-legal action.
I believe in the American justice system.
I do not believe in the justice system
that's going on right now, which is just
the public justice system.
Right now, the public is prosecuting R. Kelly.
Not the police.
Sitting here today with the new accusations,
I don't believe them.
And I don't believe that I was a part of anything
that had to do with pedophilia.
CUNNINGHAM: "What were you wearing that R. Kelly was attracted to?"
"Why did you present yourself as older than you were?"
"Why did your parents put you in this position?"
Not only were we not talking about it enough,
in the times that we were talking about it,
we were doing all of these things to put young women
on trial instead of the person who actually abused them.
FAITH: Day one of going public was the worst feeling.
Day one of having my nude pictures,
probably is, like, second worst.
So that was a crazy experience.
CHARLES: All this involving R. Kelly
has affected Faith in a major way.
We never saw her depressed,
where now we do see her depressed.
She's been in therapy.
She never was moody.
Now she's moody.
My relationship with my dad is... it's good.
Somemes I still feel, like, sorry.
I still, I guess I'm just still embarrassed.
I don't want him to be ashamed of me.
I think my parents, naturally, they say
that they're proud and they stand behind me, but, uh,
sometimes I don't feel that way.
I feel like an embarrassment to them.
I definitely, I've stopped going to church a lot.
I don't go to family events and stuff as much.
I kind of just, I think our relationship could be better,
but I think I'm just dealing with a lot right now, of after.
KITTI: I felt literally ill
having sex with him when I knew
that there were fetishes involved.
TIMOTHY: We have to fight this fight.
Not playing checkers, but playing chess.
LIZZETTE: Robert can smell a wounded woman
a mile away.
ODELEYE: This has been going on
for close to 30 years now
because of silence.
ASANTE: He's always felt that he was
above everything and everybody.
That he was untouchable.
R. Kelly, let my sister go.
JERHONDA: If he was to go to jail,
I was supposed to kill myself.
She texted me probably 50 times.
"I got to go, I got to go, I got to go."
-She says she's not here. -MICHELLE: Only question
I wanted to know was the why.
Why did you stay for so long?
LANITA: The whole block
filled up with police cars.
WOMAN: Obey him.
Follow his rules.
And when you go against him,
...you're the enemy, and he's gonna treat you like that.
CAPTIONING PROVIDED BY A+E NETWORKS