to me.
Like, Rob was my life.
HALLE CALHOUN: I would think I would be done, but, you know,
I would leave feeling like I had nothing.
DOMINIQUE GARDNER: It was like I didn't want to live anymore.
It was just dark.
MICHELLE KRAMER: He controlled everything.
He controlled when they eat.
You can't go to the bathroom when you want to?
That's a punishment.
JERHONDA PACE: He told me that if I was
everything to him, like, uh-- that I say he is,
that there would be no life worth living,
you know, if something was to happen to him.
DOMONIQUE: He said, "Your mother can't do this,
your father can't do that," and after a while,
you start to believe.
He [bleep] my daughter up.
Emotionally. [sniffles]
This is just really hard to process.
TARANA BURKE: I'm thinking about their parents.
I'm thinking about how much work it's gonna take
to free them, at the point when they are ready to be free.
Only question I wanted to know was the why.
Why? Why did you stay for so long?
♪
[cheering]
♪
KIM FOXX: Robert Kelly was indicted on ten counts
of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.
I was surprised when he was charged.
I think this time around, folks want to get it right.
He's always felt like he was above everything.
LANITA CARTER: I want him to acknowledge that he wronged me.
Said that I was important.
Make me feel like I'm not going crazy.
LIZETTE MARTINEZ: I just broke down crying.
And then, as the wounded woman
I am, you also feel guilty.
I was a part of a suicide pact.
If he was to go to jail, I was supposed to kill myself.
[sniffles]
With-with Rob, I was a part of a suicide pact with him.
And if anything was to happen to him, if he was to go to jail
or someone was to harm him, I was supposed to kill myself.
And...
I'm sorry, I'm getting emotional.
[sniffles]
[exhales]
This is just really hard to process.
[sighs]
Okay.
When the suicide pact came about,
Rob and I was in the mirror room,
and he told me that if I was everything to him,
like, uh-- that I say he is, that, you know,
there would be no life worth living.
He's like, "If something happen to me,
"I want you to take these pills.
I will leave the pills in this pocket right here."
And he had this suit hanging up below his TV,
and he put the pill bottle inside of the suit pocket.
And he told me, "If something happen to me,
you know where the pills are."
And I said, "Are you serious?"
And he said, "Yeah." He said,
"This is what you do. This is a suicide pact."
And when I was with him, I was really ready
to take my own life, because, um,
Rob, he was everything to me.
Like, Rob was my life.
ADEWALE: In an abuser,
sexual predator, cult-like following,
they're always looking for ways to keep that bond strong.
The suicide pact might be useful
in order to control an individual.
Are you willing to put them over your needs?
-Your life? -NORCOTT: You can get
people to think and do things
with enough time and enough pressure.
And a perpetrator knows that and abuses that.
If rumors of a suicide pact are true,
and it may be that if they did say yes,
or if someone's complicit with that,
they may think in the moment, like,
"Okay, well, maybe. Maybe not.
You know, I don't know. This doesn't really sound right."
But over time, that yes then leads into more conversation,
until it starts to feel like your idea,
until it starts to feel like a plan.
JERHONDA: Less than two weeks
of me being involved with Rob, um,
he told me, he's like, "You know, I spend
a lot of time in the studio."
He said, "Why don't you invite one of your friends here,
so you don't be bored."
And I was like... [gasps]
"I can invite a friend?" And I got so excited.
I was like, "Oh, my gosh, I'm about to invite a friend."
I was like, "Dominique.
Dominique's perfect."
I told Rob, like, "All right, this is her name,
this is her phone number," and I don't know
when the contact started, how they reached out to one another,
but I just know that she never came while I was there.
I asked him. I said, "Did you call, uh, Dominique?
Did you-- Is everything okay?" and he was like, "No."
He was like, "No, that-that's not your friend.
That's---You don't need to talk to her."
Probably about three days later, Dominique's dad told me
that she got invited to his house.
And I said, "Are you going?" She said, "Yeah, I'm going."
And that was the beginning of Dominique and Rob.
Dominique and I never even saw each other in the house.
We were allowed to have cell phones.
We would text and sneak phone calls to one another.
But the thing is, Rob, he didn't know
that we were talking.
He didn't want us communicating.
Now I just look like, hey,
I got-- I drug Dominique into this. Now I'm a bad friend.
But nobody knew the backstory about how Dominique was invited.
After five years of trading e-mails with Jerhonda Pace,
she went on the record.
JERHONDA: I broke the NDA
when I decided to speak with Jim DeRogatis
and do the BuzzFeedarticle.
She went on the record because her friend,
Dominique Gardner, was still with Kelly
along with Joy and Azriel, and Jerhonda was concerned
that her friend Dominique was gonna be hurt by Kelly.
MICHELLE: Before Dominique was with R. Kelly,
she was the number one fan.
She loved him.
Her dream was to meet him. And she did.
My daughter Dominique, after six years of dating R. Kelly...
...she said he wanted her to move to Atlanta.
After that, I never saw my daughter again.
He was just trying to isolate them and just,
you know, he just wanted them to forget about--
How do you forget about your parents?
I don't even know how you do that.
But basically, that's what he was trying to do.
When I saw her on the TMZ,
that's why I ain't recognize her, 'cause I'm thinking
I'm looking for some long hair, 'cause I haven't seen her
in three years-- physically, I have not seen my child.
She was so skinny.
They was in Beverly Hills.
So I went to Beverly Hills,
just to go say hi to her.
That's all I was trying to do.
Um...
[crying softly]
[quietly]: Okay, baby.
MICHELLE: 'Cause she said, "Ma, what you doing here?"
I said, "I came to see you.
It's Mother's Day weekend, baby. I love you."
She told me to come back at 6:00.
I said, "I-I ain't leaving without my daughter."
We ran out of there
like Harriet Tubman.
I was freeing a slave.
I could never forget that night.
I see my daughter.
I touch my daughter.
She was [bleep] up.
I didn't even sleep that night.
'Cause I'm watching her, 'cause she couldn't sleep
'cause she was worried about what he was gonna say.
DeROGATIS: Dominique
talked to me on the record.
It took her nine months,
and it was after Surviving R. Kelly ran.
She told me she had not watched the show
because she had lived it.
She seemed seriously conflicted.
She was avoiding talking to anybody.
Although, after Surviving R. Kelly,everybody wanted
to talk to Dominique.
Dominique had said she wanted to tell the story to me
because people didn't understand.
I-I was moved by Dominique, and, uh, I hope she's okay.
MICHELLE: Before Dominique met R. Kelly,
she was this bubbly teenager.
But after R. Kelly...
she was dark.
She was like a-a loner.
She didn't want to be bothered with nobody.
He [bleep] my daughter up.
Emotionally. [sniffles]
PRODUCER: Dominique, are you ready?
♪
-PRODUCER: Are you ready? -Mm-hmm.
DOMINIQUE: A year ago Mother's Day,
that's the day I left from the hotel
to be with my mother.
I remember getting this call from the front desk lady,
and she said, "You have a package downstairs."
And I was just like, "Okay, cool.
"Can you just bring it up
because I can't go downstairs and get it."
So a few seconds later, I get a knock at the door,
and it's my mother with a camera crew.
And that was, like, the hardest decision I had to make
because, of course, I love Rob,
but then again, I knew that the situation wasn't good.
DOMINIQUE: Joycelyn was there in the room.
Her door was closed,
so she didn't know I left that.
And I felt bad for leaving her
because it was like we was all we had.
So, it-it's tough.
It was hard for me 'cause that's not my heart.
Like, I just don't leave people hanging.
So it was very painful for me.
MICHELLE: When she left the hotel, she wrote Joy a letter
to tell her that she was sorry, but her time was up.
-MICHELLE: It's okay. -DOMINIQUE [crying]: Okay.
MICHELLE: And Gabe said he loves you so much.
It was time for her to go.
And that was one of the hardest...
She wasn't right.
She was, like, 98 [bleep] pounds.
Looking like a [bleep] boy.
She was [bleep] up.
DOMINIQUE: I was happy because I was free and she was there.
It's like a scared child
and your mother's there.
It was beautiful.
MICHELLE: We made it back to Chicago.
She was sad. She was hurt.
She wasn't the Dominique I knew.
I don't even know the words I could s-- to describe,
but it wasn't her.
It wasn't the daughter I raised.
The drinking, the drugs.
Every time she closed her eyes, she was thinking of R. Kelly,
so she couldn't sleep.
She was dark.
She was hurting.
I still had that thought process of following his rules.
If there was a guy and I didn't talk to him or look at him,
my mom was just like, "What are you doing?" You know?
And I was just like, oh,
it's-it's normal to talk to somebody.
You know, a guy.
It's okay to look at them. You know?
It was a scary feeling.
Like, "Oh, crap, I just broke one of his rules."
But I'm like, "Wait, I'm-I'm not with him anymore,
"so... [laughs]
what's to fear?"
MICHELLE: It was a control thing. He controlled everything.
He controlled when they eat, he controlled
when they buy the food. I mean,
it was sick.
Only question I wanted to know was the why.
Why, why did you stay for so long?
Because she was in love.
DOMINIQUE: Love means, for Robert,
a woman who's gonna be loyal,
who's gonna obey him,
follow his rules,
don't go against them.
And when you go against them,
it's basically, you're the enemy.
And he's gonna treat you like that.
MAN [distorted voice]: Dominique stayed
in trouble with Robert all the time
pretty much, because she
was rebellious.
Whenever she had a chance to be around other people,
she'd be a little too talkative,
and he didn't like that, so he kept her
on what he would call "punishment."
MICHELLE: She told me he was very violent.
She didn't listen. She wanted to go eat,
she went to the refrigerator to get something to eat.
That's a punishment. You can't do that.
You can't go to the bathroom when you want to.
That's a punishment.
Get an ass whupping for that.
Extension cords, belts, shoes,
whatever you could think of.
Whatever you could think of.
He, um, pulled her hair out.
That was part of her whupping.
She said there was big patches of chunks
of her hair gone.
He just saw it like, "What's going on with your hair?"
And I'm just like, "Well, you know, we had got into it.
"You know, when you pulled my hair, you pulled it
"kind of hard where to the point... yanked it out.
"So when I went to go comb it and brush it,
it was just falling out."
So, that's when he was just like,
"Well, I think you might look nice with short hair."
My hair was damaged anyway, so... let's cut it.
PRODUCER: Was there a reason why
that incident happened?
Um, I disrespected him at a party.
He asked me to come here, and I didn't.
I just didn't want to get up. [chuckles] You know?
I'm just like, I'm chilling, like, I don't want to move,
so he just felt like that was disrespectful.
I prefer not to talk about that.
PRODUCER: Okay.
MAN [distorted voice]: So, I was not aware
of Robert having attractions
to boys until a couple of the girls in the house
started to talk about there being a guy
that he was involved with who would sometimes
come into the bedroom with them.
MICHELLE: When she came home,
I didn't want her to feel inadequate,
so I cut my hair to be with her.
I am my daughter's keeper.
So, I love my new style.
We're like twins.
DOMINIQUE: The last two years,
I really felt lonely and dark with Rob.
There was times where I got left behind, felt isolated.
MICHELLE: I heard that he left her
on the tour bus for three days
with no food and water. Thank you
for his assistant that snuck her some food and some water.
He'd lock her in the bathroom, lock her in a room
for days.
And it wasn't just her.
It was all of them, but she was
the most rebellious one, so she got it the worst.
The longest I ever went by myself was a week and a half.
PRODUCER: In a room?
Mm-hmm.
Felt...
lonely, sad...
um...
it was like I didn't want to live anymore.
You know, it was just... dark.
PRODUCER: Was that one of the hardest times?
Mm-hmm, most definitely.
Yeah.
PRODUCER: When you think of, like, yourself looking back...
Can I have some tissue?
PRODUCER: Yeah, of course.
-Here. -Thank you.
Can I... take a moment?
PRODUCER: Yeah, go ahead.
Mm-hmm.
DOMINIQUE: The last two years with Rob felt...
it was like I didn't want to live anymore.
You know, it was just... dark.
[sniffles]
DOMINIQUE: Thank you.
DOMINIQUE: Mm-hmm.
Mm... bittersweet feeling.
She said that he wanted to see her.
And I tried to do everything to convince her to not go.
But what you do with a grown woman?
So she went.
First time my son actually saw me break down.
PRODUCER: Why did you go back?
DOMINIQUE: Because I didn't leave 100% on my own.
And I wanted to see how Joy was doing.
MICHELLE: She left her sisters behind.
That's how she described them. They were sisters and
I don't know if she was trying to convince them to come.
We never talked about that.
But she loved them girls.
PRODUCER: There's multiple girls who are
in a relationship with one man-- how would you describe that?
Whew, it was hard, because it's like,
everyone wants Rob's attention.
Yes, there's was jealousy going on, like,
"Oh, he's spending more time with her than me.
And doing this and that with that person, so..."
It kind of got frustrating on my part,
because... everyone wants to be that one.
We was all supposed to tell Rob
when one of us had broken his rules.
But sometimes
we'll sweep it underneath the rug,
because we didn't want
to see one another in trouble.
It was like a sisterhood. You don't want your sister
getting in trouble, so you just be like...
MAN [distorted voice]: When Dominique flew
to L.A. with Joycelyn,
it was to pretty much watch Joycelyn.
And make sure, you know, she went where she was supposed
to go and do what she was supposed to do.
Using the group to control itself is a well-used tactic.
You use the masses to control itself.
And then it becomes much easier to control
the whole group, right, 'cause you're outnumbered.
But if people are watching each other,
they're not watching you.
DOMINIQUE: When I went back to Rob
and saw Azriel and Joy, it was a happy feeling.
It was like reconnecting with them.
I felt like there would be more consequences,
but I took that chance on whatever consequences
was to come, because I was concerned about Joy.
I just wanted to make sure she was okay.
And there was no consequence when I went back.
I don't know if me leaving
kind of... like,
maybe opened his eyes up a bit,
'cause he kind of changed a little.
It was kind of scary, but I'm like, um...
Like, I left Joy in a hotel by herself,
got on a plane from L.A.
to come back to Chicago and...
no consequence? Like...
It was, it was positive, and we bonded
even more.
[laughing]
MICHELLE: "Oh, I'm sorry. I won't do that again.
"It's gonna be better. I'm gonna let you go
home and see your mom. I'm gonna let you do that."
And he'd just lied as he used to do.
Lie about everything.
Lucifer is the liar.
And God is the truth.
DOMINIQUE: The first time I left,
it did help open my eyes to certain things,
because them first two days
was like, man, I missed out
on a lot, you know? So...
I asked him if I could go to my little brother's
graduation because I promised and I don't make promises.
And he's like, "No."
Jaylen, my brother, he's everything.
He means the world to me.
He was 14 at the time.
And if you're not there,
it's like, "Oh, why don't my sister love me?"
Or "Why she didn't come, she's in Chicago."
I missed out on a lot of family
gatherings and celebrations.
And some things you can't get back.
And that was important for him.
So... I just decided to leave after that.
Monday evening... We have a dog named Lola
and she was whining.
And I was like, "Why is she whining?"
She only whines for somebody that she know is coming.
So I was like, "Girl, what you whining for?
Ain't nobody coming."
So, I look out the window.
There was a cab.
My son Jaylen hollered out so loud,
"Nikka's back! Nikka's back, Mama!"
She come in the room and she said,
"I told you I'm only in love with one woman,
and that's my mother."
And she said, "You got $25 for the cab?"
[chuckles]
She ain't never looked back since.
And... and...
MICHELLE: She missed him.
Like, when she left,
he was shorter than her.
Now, he's taller than her,
so that's her little big brother.
She missed that growth, like, he grew up
before her eyes, you know?
But he loves his sister.
FEMALE REPORTER: Singer R. Kelly
was released from jail earlier this evening.
FEMALE REPORTER 2: After spending three nights in the Cook County jail,
R. Kelly was finally back out on the town.
And the woman who made it all possible is Valencia Love.
Monday, she was able to post $100,000
to help out the R&B singer, who she called a friend.
FEMALE REPORTER Kelly went to a McDonald's after his release.
Ironically, it's the same
place where a lawsuit claimed he began seeing
a high school-aged girl, who later became pregnant.
DeROGATIS: The Rock 'N' Roll McDonald's,
where he often cruised for
preteens and teenage girls.
I guess that's the way you get away with it.
If I act like I'm innocent,
or act like I have nothing to hide, I can continue
to get away with the crimes
I've been committing.
JERHONDA: These charges, yeah, they're here, but...
he's still out there.
MICHELLE: I want him to serve.
I want to be able to say
that he never
see the outside.
He'll never be able to walk his dog anymore.
I want him to face all his victims and their families.
I want him to see the pain that he had brought to us.
JERHONDA: I just want to get the girls out.
Azriel and Joycelyn
are being mentally abused and physically abused.
And I, honestly, look at them
as victims of Stockholm syndrome.
They love their abuser.
I mean, I loved Rob when I was with him.
Azriel is me in the beginning stages with Rob.
Like, "Oh, no, this is, this is my man.
I'm gonna do whatever I have to do."
I was ready to fight to the end.
I wasn't willing to give up on Rob.
I watched the Gayle King interview with-with Kelly.
And I saw
an act.
[crying]: This is not me!
I-I'm fighting for my [bleep] life!
LINDSEY PERRYMAN-DUNN: I was happy that he was finally speaking.
Because he is someone who had just
pushed negativity out of his world
so much that he wasn't gonna talk on it.
And I told him, "You need to talk.
The public needs to hear you."
I was so happy to see that his big, uh,
TV interview was with Gayle King.
'Cause it sort of mitigated a lot of the things that
he might have been able to get away with
with a white journalist.
There's a narrative in American history
of black men being oppressed, being hunted,
uh, being accused of things that we didn't do.
But when he sits across from Gayle King, she can sort of,
like, push aside that and go, "But what about you?"
Y'all killing me with this [bleep]!
I gave you 30 years of my [bleep] career!
-Robert... -30 years of my career!
And y'all are trying to kill me!
ASANTE: I heard him scream,
and that was one thing that froze me up,
and I just felt like he was in the room.
Because I knew how he is when he get angry,
and he's done it many times.
I have seen that behavior.
I actually was scared for Gayle,
'cause I really thought that
he was gonna lash out on Gayle.
And so, I-- You know, Gayle took that very well,
because I think if it was me as the interviewer,
I probably would've ran, I'm just gonna be honest.
Because he puts that fear in me.
R. KELLY [echoing]: Y'all just don't want to believe the truth!
-You don't want to believe it! -Robert...
You just don't want to believe it!
LINDSEY: When I saw that, I saw a man
truly fighting for his freedom,
scared to death.
I can remember having a conversation with him,
and he was just talking about how people always
talk about the bad things he does,
but they never talk about the good.
And he was just crying.
And he was comparing himself to Michael Jackson,
and then he started boo-hooing.
I've never seen a grown man start boo-hooing like that.
This is exactly what I was talking about
when it came to Rob.
He don't know how to take responsibility.
He feels like the world is after him.
There's an old saying: "A hit dog will holler."
That Gayle King interview, to me,
was the personification of that.
That putting on
and crying and flailing
and gesturing and, you know, just-just all of it was,
"you have nowhere to go," because a hit dog will holler.
I started crying. I was like, "I can't watch."
I, like, literally just started doing this.
I was like, "I can't watch."
And my sister was there, and she just started hugging me.
And she was like, "It's okay," and she was crying with me.
And I was like, "I can't watch."
I was like, "That's the-- that's the person I know."
He would be so nice and talking to you,
then next thing you know, he'd flip,
and everything's your fault,
and everybody is against him.
And the abuse would start.
And it ju-- It took me there.
And I was like, "I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it."
I just want to see the girls.
I just want to see Azriel and Joycelyn.
The most horrifying thing was not his performance,
but Gayle's conversation with Joy Savage and Azriel Clary.
You know, we're gonna look at those, uh,
and we're just gonna say, "Wow, that was weird."
WatchingKing...
it was heartbreaking.
When I saw her--
Don't get me wrong, she looked stunning.
She was beautiful, but I didn't recognize her.
Her attitude, the clothes, the hair.
The tone of her voice.
Her teeth, her nose.
I couldn't believe it was her.
KING: Your parents encouraged you
-to do sexual videos with R. Kelly? -AZRIEL: Yes. Yes.
And they said, because if they ever have to blackmail him,
what they're trying to do now, they can use it against him.
Which is exactly what they're doing.
Uh, Joycelyn, I see you nodding a lot with what she's saying.
Yes. Because everything that she's saying is true.
So, you're saying the same as-- You're saying...
Well, both of our parents,
both of our parents are basically out here
trying to get money and scam.
She's still my daughter, my baby girl,
and I know that's not her words.
I birthed her, and I know
that she would never turn on her family
like he wants the world to think.
I saw my daughter just agree
with some of the things that Azriel said,
because I felt if she would've said anything out of place,
she would've got beaten for it.
It just shows that-- his control
for those young women.
He has full control of whatever he wants them to do
at all times.
Even in the presence of some other people that are there.
I honestly think what happened to my sister is that
she has been manipulated and fully turned upside down.
It just showed. It showed through her facial expressions,
her body language.
It just showed she was not happy,
and it's very heartbreaking.
[crying]
Tell me, Azriel, why you're crying. Tell me.
I'm crying because you guys don't know the truth.
You guys are believing some [bleep] facade
that our parents are saying.
This is all [bleep] lies for money.
And if you can't see that, you're ignorant
and you're stupid as [bleep].
Watching my daughter attack her parents with lies
and false allegations and anything
to protect the person she thought she loved, R. Kelly,
um...
You know, you go blank, you go numb.
And it's my job as a father to understand
that that wasn't my daughter that was speaking.
That wasn't my daughter.
That was a young lady that was surviving
in the situation that she in.
LEMIEUX: There is anSNL cold open, um,
where the infamous Gayle King interview, uh, was parodied.
How stupid would it be for me, R. Kelly,
with all the crazy illegal things
that I've done in my past, on tape,
and gotten away with scot-free, to do it again?
How stupid do you think I am? Is this the camera?
Uh, no. No.
LEMIEUX: I had mixed feelings about it.
I do believe that humor can be a powerful tool
to educate, to cope, to heal, to look something in the eye.
But the response to the allegations
against R. Kelly dating back to rumors of him dating Aaliyah,
so much of it has been humor.
"Can I get that toot-toot? Beep-beep."
He going by the school.
[laughter]
I don't know that America deserves to laugh at R. Kelly,
because America's been laughing at R. Kelly for too long.
YEE: People love the moments
that are viral moments, to see him acting out,
and people do tend to make that more of a funny thing.
And so, that was an issue that I had,
because people were taking clips of him
and using that, kind of, to make fun of him.
♪ Y'all are killing me with this [bleep]♪
-♪ Y'all trying to kill me.♪ -DeROGATIS: There's certain things
that are really not fodder for jokes.
[sighs] And yeah, it was funny, right?
But we're laughing at a man who's destroyed countless lives.
BELL: Comedy dies on the vine.
All comedy eventually turns.
And the best comedy is so specific to its time
that it turns very quickly.
I can remember laughing very hard at, uh, "Piss on You"
and-and all the R. Kelly stuff and-- and also, having a thought
like, "Oh, I didn't realize it was that serious."
♪ Only thing to make my life complete♪
♪ Is when I turn your face♪
♪ Into a toilet seat♪
♪ I want to pee on you.♪
DeROGATIS: I couldn't bring myself to watch
the new Chappelle stand-up routine,
but I've read about, uh, 20 reviews of it.
You know, it's Chappelle sort of admitting, too late,
uh, that there's something there, but it's just tossed off.
I mean, you know, if I'm a betting man,
I'm gonna put my money on he probably did that [bleep].
[laughter]
[chuckles]: I'm pretty sure he did that [bleep].
DeROGATIS: How powerful would it have been
if Chappelle took a minute and a half to say,
"I had some skits back in the day about R. Kelly,
"and now I have been made to realize the pain he caused.
"People who could've been my daughters, my sisters, my wife,
uh, and it's wrong."
I mean, that would've, that would've counted,
that would've mattered.
Uh, Chappelle never did that.
This [bleep] an idiot. He was [bleep] like, "Yeah,
"this is the best 14-year-old [bleep]
I've ever had in my life."
And she was like, "You like this 14-year-old [bleep]?"
He's like, "Oh, yeah, I love this 14..."
I'm like, "Man, you need to shut the [bleep] up."
[laughter]
You got to give your lawyer something to work with.
You're supposed to be on the tape like,
"This is the best... 36-year-old [bleep]
I've ever had in my life."
ARCENEAUX: I am guilty
of referring to R. Kelly as "pissy"
for comedic effect and just to insult him.
But I will say, actually watching Surviving R. Kelly
reminded me that the use of humor in that instance
is to trivialize what happened.
In this instance, it's rape.
It's sexual assault.
It's pedophilia.
It's not to be made fun of.
We have all made jokes that later we go, "Yikes,
that was not a good one." I have jokes like that.
On some level, it's just, how do you want to be in the world?
And I think that the one thing we should learn right now,
in the social media era, in the Internet era, in the Trump era,
is that we're all living in the same timeline and we're all--
we all have access to everybody's stuff.
Aziz Ansari has his routine about it.
Look at all this R. Kelly stuff.
All this information was out there in the past, right?
There was the Aaliyah thing, there was the tapes
and everyone just kind of looked the other way. Right?
But now the culture has reached a breaking point.
Now that there is a bingeable six-hour documentary,
the culture's like, "Hey, it's one thing
"for all this information to be out there
"in a 20-page long read, but now that it's been packaged
in an entertaining fashion, no more!"
LEMIEUX: What I don't hear from Aziz Ansari
nor Dave Chappelle in these routines
is any sort of empathy
for what happened to these girls and women.
People who-who satirized or made comedy out of R. Kelly
just helped people to laugh about it
and not think of it as a serious crime.
It becomes, "Oh, R. Kelly, we know him.
He's nasty and he's a freak."
But it doesn't underscore the fact
that he's urinating on a 13-year-old, 14-year-old girl.
And it's, and it's-- that's not helpful.
It also dehumanizes a woman.
It makes it seem like her feelings don't matter at all.
Sometimes we don't get to really hear their voices.
You know, we get to see what happened,
we get to see the jokes, and then you don't hear
what the women have to say in response to that, right?
Because I don't feel like the media
concentrates on that as much.
These are real women with real feelings
that are still having issues every time they hear or see
anything about him.
And we have to take that into account
instead of looking at it as just circumstances that happened
that we're so removed from.
Watching Azriel and Joycelyn in that subsequent interview,
just, my heart.
I'm thinking about their parents.
I'm thinking about how much work it's gonna take
to free them at the point when they are ready to be free.
It's gonna take so much work, you know?
And it's just unfortunate.
I can't really give them advice,
because no one could give me advice.
Like, people can tell you, "Leave. He's not right for you,
he don't love you."
But you have to see it for yourself.
You have to feel something in your heart.
I mean, it took me nine years.
I feel like they've been there
four, maybe five years.
But...
they love him.
Love is a very powerful drug.
TIM: Joycelyn has been involved
with R. Kelly, now to our knowledge, over four years.
And this has been a traumatic experience for me and my family.
We haven't seen her
since the year of 2016.
JAILYN: I graduated high school in 2018,
and Joycelyn did not show up at all.
I didn't hear a call from her, I didn't get a text message.
Not a congratulations.
I didn't get none of that.
TIM: He's the mastermind.
He may not read or write well,
but he can definitely control every moment
of everybody life that's around him.
He made Joycelyn sign something, saying that
her father molested her.
-Mm-hmm. -That was something that was very heartbreaking to me.
Her father or no one,
no male in her family has ever touched her.
Luckily, I was able to get
the information first hand
from his, from one of his old young ladies, Halle;
so those type of smear campaigns, um, that he's,
was one thing that he threatened to expose.
I believe he's told her that he would
-expose that information... -Right.
...if she was to speak out against him.
My name is Halle Calhoun,
and I was one of R. Kelly's girlfriends.
We met at a concert in, um, Columbia, South Carolina.
I went with my mom to a show.
Someone who worked for him approached me,
pulled us aside and said,
"You know, Rob wants to meet her."
I met him, and we just talked in the, in the little room
backstage for at least an hour,
just about random stuff.
He had something about him to where it would,
you would just get drawn into him.
He was just so young at heart.
That's definitely what gets you
in, you know, the beginning.
I lived with Rob
for three and a half years
when I was with him.
I wasn't sure who else was living with Rob,
especially when I first met him.
But when I did know kind of what was going on
in the situation, um,
it was just Joy and Azriel,
and Dominique.
But we were always kind of separated.
He was paranoid a lot.
He was... he didn't trust anybody.
He didn't like you to be in any type of contact with
his, the men that worked for him or his male friends.
If a man would walk by, he would want me to turn my head.
When we would go shopping,
or if I would go shopping,
he wanted you to wear, you know, less attractive clothes.
You know, 'cause he didn't want you to look, you know,
too attractive, you know, outside, without him,
'cause he felt like you're his woman.
When Joy and Azriel's parents
started making this a big deal,
Rob was getting very paranoid,
and he didn't know who was against him.
So, when my mom wanted to see me,
he did want her to
go in the sauna with just a towel.
So he could know there's no cameras,
you're not trying to record...
Um, I don't remember exactly what she...
he wanted her to write, but it was something similar to
us trying to blackmail him and use him for money.
NORCOTT: According to some of the women
and their families, they signed these documents;
and that seems to be feeding into this idea
that we as a society
look for any shortcut to blame victims,
calling them money-hungry, celebrity hounds,
promiscuous;
and potentially, by signing these documents,
what you're doing upfront is undermining their credibility
to share reports about their own victimization
or what's happened to them, right up front.
When I left, he called me and told me I had a week
to come back home, and if I didn't come back home,
to lose his number.
But in order for me to come back home, he wanted me to text him,
like, a long paragraph saying that I'm sorry for disrespecting
his guests and some other crap.
And so once I sent him that text,
then he would send for me. And I never did.
It was basically, I guess, something for him
to use against me.
Because I was like, why would I text this,
and none of this happened?
JERHONDA: I asked him what was this letter for?
He said, "You know, I have people around me
"that try to bring me down. I don't trust people.
Everybody that come around me try to use me."
And he told that he wanted me to write this letter
to make sure that I wasn't one of those people.
I told him that this stuff didn't happen.
He said, "Well, if none of that stuff happened,
you wouldn't have a problem writing it."
And I said, "Yeah, you're right.
I know that stuff didn't happen, I'll write it for you."
And I wrote this letter, and I signed it,
and he told me not to date it. And I put the date on it.
And everything that I signed, he told me not to date,
but I still put the date on it.
Dominique told me that he made her sign a letter
saying that I abused her,
I beat her. [chuckles]
Sorry. Not this parent.
HALLE: There was a time where he thought
I was looking at another man or talking
or... texting or something like that.
But we got into an altercation;
and I remember we were arguing back and forth,
and I remember shoving him because he was, like,
yelling in my face, and then he, like,
grabbed me and I had a necklace on,
so when he grabbed me, my necklace broke,
and it scratched me.
And that's just like any other relationship normally,
you know?
People get into altercations. Things happen.
MAN [distorted voice]: I was told that he choked her,
pinned her up against the door,
broke her necklace that she was wearing,
and really roughed her up.
She had bruises on her face, on her neck;
supposedly someone found her
outside in the parking lot crying
after it happened.
They got into quite a bit of physical fights.
Him being who he is, things get more blown up
and, like, to, like, he's a monster.
Not saying that it's, any of it is okay.
It's things that happen in every day's--
our, our friends, our family members
could be dealing, they could be dealing with the same thing.
ADEWALE: Sometimes abuse at an early age
teaches you love is violence.
Teaches you love is crossing my boundaries.
Some of these men might actually love these women,
but they hurt them.
Some of these women might believe
that love is hurt.
In most people's book, hurt does not equal love.
HALLE: I left a few times
and I would think I would be done,
but you know, I would leave feeling like I had nothing
or, you know, when your heart's with somebody
and you just leave, that's hard.
You feel empty. You feel like...
sometimes you feel worthless.
ADEWALE: It's possible that these girls believed
if they left, their worlds would fall apart.
A sexual abuser can also make you feel
that you'll never, ever be happy without him.
A sexual abuser can make you feel like
"you'll never find someone as good as me."
These are the ways sexual abusers
use psychological manipulation to control.
I would say what made me decide
to leave for good was,
you know, just being in that situation for...
three and a half years.
I don't want to be with a man, you know,
that wants other women.
Um, realizing that I have goals
and dreams that I want to accomplish.
I definitely got lost in that relationship.
But I definitely learned a lot from it.
I do feel like the girls should at least speak to their parents.
They should sit down, you know?
I know it's gonna be heated, and a lot of things
are gonna be crazy, but I feel like,
you know, family is everything, and life is too short.
DeROGATIS: Joy Savage,
the Savages' daughter,
was a young, aspiring singer of legal age
who drops out of college to begin living with Kelly.
Never made music again.
And the Clarys' daughter,
Azriel Clary... It took a while for the Clarys
to open up the way the Savages had.
There were months and months of reporting,
and eventually they went on the record
that their daughter Azriel, who began sexual contact
while she was underage
in the state of Florida with Kelly,
did the same thing.
Separates herself from her family,
all of her friends.
No more contact with anybody
-and begins living with Kelly. -Hey, it's Azriel,
and I'm gonna rock the national anthem
for you guys, and I hope you enjoy it.
Do either of you want to sing?
-No. -No.
None of you have any singing ambitions?
-No. -No.
♪ Oh, say can you see♪
♪ By the dawn's early light♪
-JOYCELYN: No, I do not. -AZRIEL: That's a l...
-That's another lie. -KING: Okay.
Before I even met R. Kelly,
I told my parents I did not want to sing.
My parents made singing, like, a job
for me, so it's not something I wanted to do.
Azriel was about seven or eight when she started music,
and, um, I think she just started humming first.
She would never hit full notes.
She could just hum and hold notes humming.
And, uh, one day, she just starts singing.
And she really opened up and...
hit a note that was like, "Wow! Who said that?"
And they was like, "That was Az."
And this and that, and right from that day on,
we start taking it serious,
and we went-went forward
with trying to get her vocal c-coaches
and, you know, all the necessary steps
to make Azriel into who she became.
ARMANI CLARY: Azriel's ambitions
used to be
that she wanted
to be the next Beyoncé, hands down.
Azriel's ambition now
is that she doesn't want to sing.
And...
that hurts because
everything I worked for was because I watched her
put so much hard work into her craft.
That's my little sister. Like, she inspired me,
and now she's not even inspired to do anything.
I watched this man
manipulate my little sister.
Azriel...
doesn't want to believe that he's a monster.
Whatever he's telling her
or whatever picture he's painting for her,
he has it that he is an angel
and everyone else in the whole world
is just a demon.
He felt like
he wasmy family.
So it's basically like,
"Your family really don't exist
"or they're not as important because technically,
I'm the one that's taking care of you."
You know, like, "Your mother can't do this.
Your father can't do that." And after a while,
you start to believe, like, "Yeah, you know what?
"My parents really can't,
"you know, afford to drop some money
on this and that like he was able to."
And, to me, I feel like he used that
because...
I mean, you're young. You don't want to work.
This man's taking care of you, paying all the bills,
'cause basically, it's like, "Hey, you're here.
"I'm taking care of you, you know?
"If you want them to take care of you,
then go be with them."
GERALD GRIGGS: The Savages have received a lot
of negative press, a lot of backlash
from a lot of different sources.
Um, but the facts and evidence speak for itself.
I've heard all these allegations
that the Savages sold their daughter
and this was about money.
I believe it was the interview,
um, with Robert Sylvester Kelly
where he made certain allegations
against the Savage family directly
after speaking to Gayle King.
And so we hosted a press conference
outside of my office
where I challenged Mr. Kelly directly.
If there's no problem
and she's in a consensual, loving relationship
with Mr. Robert Sylvester Kelly,
she could easily speak to her two younger sisters,
her aunts, her uncles, her immediate family.
We are in a battle
to make sure that she is not a victim
to the allegations that we've heard
and now the charges that we've heard
against Robert Sylvester Kelly.
We asked for direct contact with Joycelyn Savage.
We've been trying to do it all other ways,
but we brought it directly to the press.
It was livestreamed around the world.
And about five minutes later, I walk inside my office,
and the phone rings, and it's Darrell Johnson,
the-the publicist.
And he's saying that he has Joycelyn,
uh, on the phone.
She wants to call her parents.
JONJELYN: Hello?
JOYCELYN: Hello?
Hey, hello. This Joycelyn?
TIM: I will do whatever it takes
to get Joycelyn out of this situation
and to get these other young ladies free.
WOMAN [crying]: Yeah, I know she's here.
LEMIEUX: R. Kelly's been arrested,
and the charges are damning.
NEWSWOMAN: A federal grand jury
has indicted Kelly on 13 counts,
including child pornography, enticement of a minor
and obstruction of justice.
I have never seen so many charges
filed in so many jurisdictions
-against one celebrity. -DeROGATIS: He is charged
with a federal criminal enterprise
under the RICO statutes.
This is what they get
mobsters and drug gangs on.
What more do people need to see
that he really is a monster?
The SS R. Kelly
is sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
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