Read a harrowing excerpt from Jim DeRogatis’ Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly
Back in February, after numerous victims came forward to be a part of the illuminating six-part Lifetime documentary series Surviving R. Kelly, the singer and producer was formally charged with ten counts of aggravated sexual abuse. As the public awaits the start of Kelly’s official criminal trial, more details about the allegations continue to come to light, both in a follow-up documentary titled Surviving R. Kelly: The Impact and in a new book by music critic Jim DeRogatis, who’s been reporting on the allegations against Kelly for two decades. An excerpt from the latter, titled Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly, was recently published on Billboard and it paints a harrowing picture of Kelly’s patterns of abuse.
J. and her husband Tim were the first of 14 sources who told me the same story: six women who slept with Kelly lived at his two Georgia rental properties, moving between a seven-bedroom French-style mansion in Johns Creek, a suburb 30 miles northeast of Atlanta, and a four-bedroom single-family home two miles away. The star denied the women, all legal age, any contact with friends and family, my sources said. He controlled every aspect of their lives, dictating what they ate, how they dressed, when they bathed, when they slept, and how they pleasured him in sexual encounters that he recorded. Kelly punished the women physically and mentally, my sources added, if they broke “his rules.”