CHICAGO — Barely a week after he was bailed out of jail while facing sex abuse charges, R. Kelly was taken back into custody on Wednesday for failing to pay his ex-wife more than $160,000 in child support.
Mr. Kelly’s return to jail came just hours after the airing of his first interview since he was charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in connection with four women, three of whom prosecutors say were underage at the time. He was released last week on a $100,000 bond paid by a friend after several days of apparently struggling to come up with the money.
In the interview, with Gayle King of “CBS This Morning,” he was emotional and unyielding. He denied having had sex with underage girls and portrayed himself as a victim of a social media-fueled smear campaign.
Mr. Kelly, 52, whose real name is Robert Kelly, screamed, cursed and pleaded to the camera.
“Hate me if you want to, love me if you want,” he said. “But just use your common sense. How stupid would it be for me, with my crazy past and what I’ve been through — oh, right now I just think I need to be a monster, hold girls against their will, chain them up in my basement, and don’t let them eat, don’t let them out!”
He continued, directly into the camera, and grew tearful: “I didn’t do this stuff! This is not me!”
“I’m fighting for my life!” he said, using an expletive. He jumped out of his seat and became so upset that Ms. King paused the interview so he could regain his composure.On Wednesday, he was back in court, having been ordered last month to pay his ex-wife Andrea Kelly $161,663 in child support, according to The Chicago Sun-Times, about $30,000 less than the total he owes her. They had three children together.
“Surviving R. Kelly,” a Lifetime documentary that aired in January, said that since the couple divorced in 2009, Mr. Kelly had stopped paying child support on “several occasions.”
“I’m in foreclosure court on my house,” Ms. Kelly said in the documentary. “Why? Robert stopped paying child support as a way to punish me.”
Darryll Johnson, a spokesman for Mr. Kelly, said the singer arrived in court on Wednesday in “good spirits,” hoping to work out a deal in which he would pay his former wife as much as $60,000. But the court decided that he would have to pay the full ordered amount before he could be released.
can’t pay,” Mr. Johnson said. “He hasn’t worked in a long time. He just didn’t have the money.”
While Kelly “has some money,” he added, “at the end of the day, he has to live.”
Ms. Kelly’s lawyer said she could not discuss the case, which is under seal.
“Surviving R. Kelly” had brought new attention to longstanding accusations that Mr. Kelly had mistreated women, reviving prosecutors’ interest in his behavior and leading to his arrest last month.
In his CBS interview, Mr. Kelly dismissed the accounts in the documentary.
“Nobody said nothing good,” he said. “They was describing Lucifer. I’m not Lucifer. I’m a man. I make mistakes, but I’m not a devil. And by no means am I a monster.”
Ms. King repeatedly pressed Mr. Kelly about the many allegations against him. He gave no ground, and often fired back at his accusers.
When she asked him if he had broken any laws, he responded, “Absolutely not.”
“You can start a rumor on a guy like me or a celebrity just like that,” he said. “All you have to do is push a button on your phone and say: ‘So and so did this to me. R. Kelly did this to me.’”
R. Kelly’s booking photo after he was jailed for failure to pay child support.Cook County Sheriff’s Office
One of the women he is charged with sexually abusing when she was a minor, Jerhonda Pace, said on Instagram and Twitter that what she saw in the interview “was a man that needs help.”
“For decades he’s been around enablers who never told him the truth” about his conduct, she wrote. “Him believing he’s doing no wrong is no different than an adult telling a child Santa is real.”
According to prosecutors, another of the underage girls was the same one who appeared in a sex tape with Mr. Kelly that resulted in a 2008 trial on child pornography charges. The girl did not testify then, and Mr. Kelly was found not guilty after his lawyers successfully argued that his identity could not be proved.
In an excerpt from the CBS interview released on Tuesday, Mr. Kelly referred to his acquittal, telling Ms. King: “You can’t double jeopardy me like that. You can’t. It’s not fair.”
The new charges involving that girl are based on a newly obtained videotape, about two decades old, that came from someone who had once been in contact with Mr. Kelly. That person recently gave the tape to Michael Avenatti, the celebrity lawyer, who turned it over to prosecutors.
In the tape, the girl refers several times to having 14-year-old body parts and, according to Mr. Avenatti, the acts depicted in the video were different from those at the center of the 2008 case, eliminating any issue of double jeopardy.
Ms. King also mentioned that Lady Gaga had recently apologized for collaborating with Mr. Kelly on a song several years ago. He responded: “She’s a very great talent and it’s unfortunate that her intelligence go to such a short level when it comes to that.”
Some of the interview covered allegations separate from Mr. Kelly’s criminal case: that he has held women in a kind of sexual and emotional captivity, dictating their every move, including when they can go to the bathroom. The parents of two women now living with Mr. Kelly, Azriel Clary, 21, and Joycelyn Savage, 23, have accused him of brainwashing their daughters.
“I love them,” Mr. Kelly told Ms. King. “It’s like they’re like my girlfriends. We have a relationship. It’s real and I know guys like — I’ve known guys all my life that have five or six women, O.K. So don’t go there on me.”
As for their ages, Mr. Kelly said: “I don’t look at much younger than me. I just look at legal,” and that he was an “older man that loves all women,” regardless of age.
He also said the women’s parents had encouraged them to get close to him to jump-start their music careers. “What kind of father, what kind of mother would sell their daughter to a man?” he said, adding that Ms. Clary’s parents had wanted her to have sex with him.
Ms. King also conducted a joint interview of Ms. Clary and Ms. Savage; an excerpt was aired on Wednesday with more to come on Thursday. On Friday night CBS will broadcast a one-hour program with additional segments from the interviews with Mr. Kelly and the women.
In the excerpt aired on Wednesday, Ms. Clary is visibly emotional.
“I’m crying because you guys don’t know the truth,” Ms. Clary said. “You guys believe in some facade that our parents are saying; this is all lies for money. If you can’t see that, you’re ignorant, and you’re stupid,” adding several expletives.
Ms. Clary’s parents responded on Twitter via Mr. Avenatti.
After Ms. Savage’s parents held a news conference in Atlanta later in the morning, their daughter called them. According to a television reporter who was there, the parents said it was the first time they had spoken with her in two years.
A few hours later, Mr. Kelly was led away to jail once again.
ource: The New York Times
ource: The New York Times
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