R. Kelly Is Holding Women Against Their Will In A “Cult,” Parents Told Police

Backstage at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino in Indio, California, on May 23, 2015, J. was thrilled that her 19-year-old daughter’s music career was going to make a major leap forward from recording demos and performing at talent shows to the chance of stardom — thanks to the help of an R&B superstar.

“When we got to go backstage with R. Kelly, we stayed there over two hours,” said J. “One-on-one with just me and my daughter and him. We went back to talk about the music. He listened to her CD. He was going to help her with her CD, and I was really impressed with him at first, because I have always been an R. Kelly fan.”

J. said that Robert “R.” Kelly, who turned 50 in January, met her daughter backstage at a concert in Atlanta earlier that month. Soon enough, he’d invited her to fly out to the Indio concert on his dime. J. said she’d heard about past sexual misconduct accusations against Kelly, but wasn’t overly worried. She is a fiercely devoted stage mom — she and her husband of 22 years, Tim, a car dealer, had moved from Memphis to Atlanta to help their eldest child’s career — and was confident she could protect her daughter.

“In the back of our minds, we were thinking [my daughter] could be around him if I was with her,” J. said. “It didn’t really hit home. Even with the Aaliyah situation, now that I think about it, ‘Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number’ ... but you don’t think about that. You grew up with the song, and you like the song.”

Two years later, J. and Tim are in a desperate fight to bring their daughter home. (BuzzFeed News verified their identities and full names in public records, but is withholding the alleged victim's full name and her parents' last name to protect her privacy.)

As part of their efforts, the mother closed her businesses, became a relentless amateur detective, and shared her findings with the FBI and police in two states. But their daughter isn’t a missing person — at least not in the eyes of the law. She still lives with Kelly and says she’s doing fine, despite her parents telling the police that she is “being held against her will” in what they call a “cult.”

Three former members of Kelly’s inner circle — Cheryl Mack, Kitti Jones, and Asante McGee — provided details supporting the parents’ worst fears. They said six women live in properties rented by Kelly in Chicago and the Atlanta suburbs, and he controls every aspect of their lives: dictating what they eat, how they dress, when they bathe, when they sleep, and how they engage in sexual encounters that he records.

The last time J. saw her daughter was Dec. 1, 2016.

“It was as if she was brainwashed. [She] looked like a prisoner — it was horrible,” she said. “I hugged her and hugged her. But she just kept saying she’s in love and [Kelly] is the one who cares for her. I don’t know what to do. I hope that if I get her back, I can get her treatment for victims of cults. They can reprogram her. But I wish I could have stopped it from happening.”

J. and Tim said they have only heard from their daughter twice since they last saw her. They got a one-sentence text from her on Christmas Day: “I hate Christmas has to be this way this year.”

And J. received another text on May 14: “Happy Mother’s Day from me and Rob.”

Kelly has sold nearly 60 million albums during his 25-year career, and though his relevance is fading somewhat from the heyday of “I Believe I Can Fly” and “Trapped in the Closet,” he remains a major star in high demand for concerts, endorsements, television and radio appearances, and glossy magazine profiles. When he’s not performing, Kelly splits his time between his suburban Atlanta home and Trump Tower in Chicago. Extensive interviews with Mack, Jones, and McGee and a review of legal documents by BuzzFeed News paint a picture of what Kelly’s life offstage is like today.

The women in Kelly’s entourage initially think “This is R. Kelly, I’m going to live a lavish lifestyle,” said Mack, who worked as Kelly’s personal assistant for a year and a half starting in 2013 and has remained in touch with some members of his inner circle. “No. You have to ask for food. You have to ask to go use the bathroom. … [Kelly] is a master at mind control. ... He is a puppet master.”

Jones and McGee both said they lived with Kelly and had sexual relationships with the star at different times over the past five years before leaving. Their documentation of this time is limited, however, as they said Kelly controlled their phone and social media use while they were under his roof, and they were not allowed to take photos with Kelly or of the rooms where they were living.

According to Mack, Jones, and McGee, the women living in Kelly’s Duluth, Georgia, “guest house” or his Chicago recording studio last summer included:

• A 31-year-old “den mother” who “trained” newcomers on how Kelly liked to be pleasured sexually. She had been best friends since high school with the girl in the videotape for which Kelly was tried in 2008. She recently parted ways with Kelly, these sources say.
• A 25-year-old woman who also has been part of Kelly’s scene for seven years.
• A recent arrival, a 19-year-old model who has been photographed in public with Kelly and named on music gossip websites — a rarity among the women in his circle.
• An Atlanta songwriter who began her relationship with Kelly around 2009, when she was 19. (She is now 26.)
• And an 18-year-old singer from Polk County, Florida. Mack said the Florida singer is Kelly’s “favorite — his number-one girl.”

Mack, Jones, and McGee claim that women who live with Kelly, who he calls his “babies,” are required to call him “Daddy” and must ask his permission to leave the Chicago recording studio or their assigned rooms in the “guest house” Kelly rents near his own rented mansion in suburban Atlanta. A black SUV with a burly driver behind the wheel is almost always parked outside both locations. Kelly confiscates the women’s cell phones, they said, so they cannot contact their friends and family; he gives them new phones that they are only allowed to use to contact him or others with his permission. Kelly films his sexual activities, McGee and Jones said, and shows the videos to men in his circle.

Mack, the star’s former personal assistant, said Kelly almost always tells the women to dress in jogging suits because “he doesn’t want their figures to be exposed; he doesn’t want them to look appealing.” She said when other men are in the same room, Kelly “would make the girls turn around and face the wall in their jogging suits because he doesn’t want them to be looked at by anyone else.”

If the women break any of Kelly’s “rules,” Mack and Jones said, he punishes them physically and verbally. For example, Jones claimed that Kelly held her against a tree and slapped her outside of a Subway sandwich shop in spring 2013 because she had been too friendly with the male cashier there. McGee said she never saw Kelly hit anybody, but also said he was running a “cult” and manipulated her emotionally and sexually.

“R. Kelly is the sweetest person you will ever want to meet,” McGee said. “But Robert is the devil.”

Of course, the law says that consenting adults may take part in any relationship they want, no matter how nontraditional. Welfare checks by police in both Illinois and Georgia in the past year didn’t lead to any charges; in January, the aspiring singer from Georgia told Cook County police she was “fine and did not want to be bothered.”

And all of the women in Kelly’s inner circle are of legal age — the age of consent is 17 in Illinois and 16 in Georgia — despite Kelly’s history of allegations against him regarding his sexual conduct with women. He was last tried in 2008 in Illinois, where he was acquitted on 14 charges of making child pornography. The case, which took a record six and a half years to go to trial in Chicago, focused only on a single videotape that prosecutors alleged showed him having sex with a 14-year-old girl. (While he was a reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, this reporter received the tape anonymously and turned it over to the police; called by Kelly's attorneys to testify, he took the Fifth Amendment rather than revealing sources.)

The trial, however, excluded claims made by girls or their parents that alleged Kelly regularly abused his position of fame and influence to pursue illegal sexual relationships with underage girls — which has also been the subject of a dozen or more civil lawsuits against Kelly that were settled out of court with cash payments from Kelly. The girls signed nondisclosure agreements when they accepted the payments. Also excluded was evidence of Kelly’s marriage in 1994 to his then-15-year-old protégé, Aaliyah, for whom he wrote the album Age Ain’t Nothing But a Number.

Chicago attorney Susan E. Loggans declined to say how many settlements she has negotiated with Kelly before lawsuits were ever filed, but she said they were “numerous,” and recently included one for a 17-year-old aspiring singer from Chicago’s West Side who is said to have been part of Kelly’s inner circle. Loggans gave no other details, citing attorney-client privilege and the terms of the settlement.

Kelly also has been sued by other attorneys representing women over the age of consent in their respective states. In 2002, an Illinois lawsuit was filed by Montina Woods, a dancer who toured with Kelly’s friend Ronald Isley, in which Woods claimed she was unknowingly recorded by Kelly during sex. (Kelly eventually settled the suit, paying Woods an undisclosed sum.) And on April 21, a Mississippi lawsuit was filed by Hinds County sheriff’s deputy Kenny Bryant over an alleged affair between Kelly and Bryant’s wife.

The music industry has a history of stars using their fame to gain the trust of young women — and their parents — who expect professional relationships but end up in sexual ones. But numerous sources, including women who left his inner circle, made on-the-record allegations suggesting ongoing mental and physical abuse of several women in Kelly’s entourage far beyond that of the groupie culture. For two decades, Kelly has been accused of a similar pattern of mistreating women — some have called it “predation” — but because of his acquittal on the child-porn charges and the nondisclosure agreements in his numerous civil cases, the charges have remained in the realm of gossip instead of derailing his career. Major record companies, television shows, and other stars continue to work with Kelly. Lady Gaga recorded the duet “Do What U Want” with Kelly in 2013, Lil Wayne, Ty Dolla Sign, and Juicy J made cameos on Kelly’s 2015 album The Buffet, and he performed on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon last December. He recently starred in a digital campaign for Alexander Wang.

“I got trapped,” said former insider Jones. “I had people telling me I was an idiot. But it took me a long time to realize they were right, and I’m talking now because I hope I can help some of these other girls.”

After her backstage visit with Kelly in Indio, California, the aspiring singer from Georgia began secretly talking with Kelly on her cell phone, her mother said.

“As far as I know, we weren’t talking to [Kelly] anymore,” J. said. “Or at least I wasn’t talking to him anymore.”

In June 2015, J. and Tim said, their daughter lied to them about taking a weekend trip to visit a Georgia university. Instead, Mack arranged for her to fly to Oklahoma City, where Kelly was performing.

After the show, she had sex with Kelly for the first time, she later told her parents and at least two friends, including a record producer who goes by the stage name TONE.

As the Georgia singer and Kelly became closer, TONE recalled her saying she was frustrated with Kelly. She thought every time she tried to bring up her music career Kelly changed the topic to sex — and she wanted proof. So TONE and the woman decided to secretly record a phone conversation between her and Kelly.

BuzzFeed News was later given a copy of the recording. On the tape, it’s not just what Kelly said that shows his pattern of behavior with the women close to him. It's how he said it, which is immediately clear from listening to the audio.

“I miss my baby,” Kelly told the woman, before asking her what she was wearing. After she replied, he told her: “I want you to get in the habit of telling me what color panties you got on every day,” he instructed repeatedly, revealing in his own words the early stages of their power dynamic and the demands her parents say have become criminal.

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