The journalist who broke the first story about R. Kelly's sex crime allegations and spent years reporting on the subject, Jim DeRogatis, says the musician gets off too easy.
Kelly was acquitted in 2008 in the trial accusing him of filming sex with a 13-year-old.
Still, the mountain of allegations against Kelly is significant enough that DeRogatis has criticized media outlets like Pitchfork for letting him headline a music festival this summer and Jezebel for positively reviewing his new album, "Black Panties."
Today, Jessica Hopper of the Village Voice published an interview with DeRogatis, who now hosts the syndicated public radio show "Sound Opinions" and teaches at Columbia College, along with embedded court documents and reporting on the investigation.
Below are some of the worst allegations against Kelly, which DeRogatis says can be found in Cook County, Ill. records:
- Dozens of lawsuits allege stories of R. Kelly's sexual assaults on young, African-American girls, according to DeRogatis.
- In one, hundred of pages long, a girl claimed R. Kelly had a relationship with her as a sophomore in high school. He would allegedly pick her and other girls up at school and make them all have sex together. When he dumped her, her suit said, she attempted suicide by slitting her wrists.
- In one video, part of R. Kelly's infamous child porn indictment, the R&B star reportedly ordered a girl to call him Daddy and urinated in her mouth. "You watch the video ... and there is the disembodied look of the rape victim," DeRogatis said.
- R. Kelly allegedly pressured one high school student to have an abortion. He even "had his goons drive her," according to DeRogatis.
- DeRogatis also implied that R. Kelly may have paid off one of his alleged victims. When DeRogatis wrote one of his stories, the girl, "fresh out of eighth grade," and her family suddenly took a six-month vacation to France. "This was an aluminum-siding, lower-middle-class house on the South Side, with a station wagon which is 13 years old — you know what I mean? And now they're in the south of France," DeRogatis said.
Prosecutors spent more than six years trying to take R. Kelly to court, and a jury acquitted him of all 14 charges in just a few hours, according to The New York Times. Kelly's high-powered defense team convinced the jury they couldn't determine the girl's identity, even though more than a dozen witnesses for the prosecution identified her.