Another day, another young woman coming forward with allegations against alleged serial predator Robert Sylvester Kelly, 51.
The young woman was 19 at the time she says she met the singer known as R. Kelly in 2017 at a concert in Dallas. They formed a sexual relationship over the course of 11 months that quickly turned physically, sexually and psychologically abusive, according to “Queen,” the pseudonym her attorney is using to protect her identity. She says the singer also infected her with a sexually transmitted disease.
She discovered her STD status after reaching out to Timothy Savage, father of Jocelyn Savage, a 22-year-old woman who dropped out of college in 2016 to live with R. Kelly. Her parents have not seen her since.
According to S. Lee Merritt, Queen’s attorney, Savage immediately asked her if she had had sex with the singer and if she had been tested for STDs.
Queen, who had been tested for STDs weeks before becoming exclusively involved with Kelly (with all tests coming back negative), then discovered that she did now, in fact, have herpes, Merritt told The Root.
Merritt filed criminal charges on his client’s behalf on April 9, 2018, “identifying Robert ‘R.’ Kelly as her assailant in a sexual assault incident resulting in serious bodily harm.”
“Our client was the victim of several forms of criminal misconduct by Kelly, including, but not limited to, unlawful restraint, furnishing alcohol and illegal drugs to a minor, and aggravated assault [referencing the intentional transfer of herpes],” Merritt said in a press release.
The Root spoke with Queen via phone and text. Here is her story, in her own words:
I met R. Kelly in March of 2017 at a concert. He asked for my number and we kept in contact. We met up approximately six times over an 11-month period.
Over time, he gradually began to introduce me to his lifestyle and eventually confessed to me about a group of women that shared him sexually and lived in his home under certain restrictions and requirements. He introduced me first to Jocelyn Savage, who he said I should get to know but without sharing any personal information about ourselves or backgrounds.
I told Kelly that I was not comfortable with sex with other women and that I had reservations about his lifestyle. He said [...] he didn’t anticipate that he would use me for group sex, but if he decided to, I would have to consent without protest. He began providing me instructions on how to behave around him, how to address him, how to sit, how to walk, how I was allowed to interact with the opposite sex, how I should respond to commands from him.
Example: He told me if we were ever in public and one of his friends came up to him and greeted him, that if he addressed me as “his bitch” I was not to respond negatively. I was told that he wanted his women to remind him of his puppy, his mother or his daughter. He also warned that as our relationship grew he would need total control and access to my social media, phone and contacts.
On another occasion, he went on to explain to me that he needed me to sign a contract for his protection and offer collateral damaging information about myself and family. Instead of going along with these very bizarre protocols, I ended our relationship in February of this year.
During the time that I was being groomed to join Kelly’s sex cult, I was recorded without permission; he also watched himself engaging in sexual acts with other women around me. I was kept in solitude for extensive periods of time, coerced into engaging in sexual acts that I did not want to engage in and treated very much like something less than human.
Kelly was working to break me down in order to have complete control of me the way he appears to have control of the other women in his home. From my observation, Jocelyn Savage appears to [be] very much broken and unhappy but fearful of leaving Kelly’s home. I communicated as much to the Savage family.
In a statement issued to the Washington Post via a representative, Kelly denied this and all other allegations.
Merritt is to hold a press conference Tuesday at Dallas Police Department headquarters.