"I BELIEVE I CAN FLY: How R. Kelly America's R&B King Became a Sexual Predator"

0:00 Warning. This episode contains references to sexual situations that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please proceed with caution. Caliogus Shark Media. Good morning, I'm read Carter, and welcome to Celebrity Trials. While we bring you all the latest from current trials happening right now, there aren't many major proceedings underway at the moment, so we're taking you back to explore some of the greatest celebrity trials ever, cases that didn't just make headlines but changed how we think about fame, power, and justice. Remember, you don't have to be a celebrity going in, but you will be one when the verdict comes down. Recently, R. Kelly has been back in the news with shocking claims about prison murder plots and attempts to secure his release. It's the latest chapter in a story that spans three decades of alligationations, denials, and ultimately justice.

1:04 Let's go back to understand how we got here. For nearly three decades, Robert Sylvester Kelly was one of the most successful R and B artists in history. His hit about Believing You Could Fly became an anthem of hope and possibility behind the music. However, was a man who preyed on young girls and boys, using his fame as a weapon and his enterprise as a hunting ground. This is the story of how one of America's most beloved singers became one of its most notorious predators, and how it took a cultural revolution to finally bring him down. Let me paint you the picture of R. Kelly's America in the nineteen nineties. This was the era of Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and Boys Two Men. R and B was the soundtrack of Romance, and Kelly was its undisputed king, multiple Grammy Awards, chart topping albums, and a voice that could make grown women weep. He wasn't just a musician, he was a cultural force. But even during his meteoric rise, there were warning signs that everyone chose to ignore. R.

2:10 Kelly meets a twelve year old girl named Aliah Houghton through her uncle Barry Hankerson. Kelly is already an established artist, twenty four years old and hungry for his next big project. Aliyah is a child with an extraordinary voice and dreams of stardom. What happened next should have ended Kelly's career before it really began. According to court testimony that would emerge decades later, Kelly began having sexual contact with Aliyah when she was just thirteen or fourteen years old. Think about that for a moment. While the world was celebrating his musical genius, Kelly was systematically grooming and abusing a child.

2:51 In nineteen ninety four, Kelly produced Aliah's debut album, the title age Ain't Nothing But a Number. Even then, he was telling us exactly who he was. We just weren't listening. August thirty first, nineteen ninety four, in a secret ceremony at the Sheraton Gateway Suites in Illinois, twenty seven year old R. Kelly married fifteen year old Aliyah. To make this legal, Kelly had bribed a state employee to create a fake ID listing Aliyah as eighteen years old. Let me be clear about what this was. A grown man using his wealth and influence to facilitate the rape of a child, because that's what sex with a fifteen year old is, regardless of what the fake marriage certificate said.

3:36 The marriage was annulled in February nineteen ninety five, but the damage was done. Kelly had established a pattern that would define the next three decades of his life. Find vulnerable young people, groom them, abuse them, and use legal maneuvers to avoid consequences. But here's what's truly disturbing about the Aliah situation. The music industry knew, record executives knew, lawyers knew, and they all decided that Kelly's hit making ability was more important than protecting a child. Barry Hankerson, Aliah's uncle, and the man who introduced her to Kelly, later expressed regret, but in the moment when it mattered, the adults who should have protected Aliyah chose profit over protection. Meanwhile, Kelly's career soared hit after hit, album after album, and always more young girls gravitating toward the man who promised to make their dreams come true. Tiffany Hawkins, who had met Kelly when she was fifteen and he was twenty four, filed a civil lawsuit alleging sexual abuse. The suit detailed how Kelly had encouraged her to recruit other underage friends for group sexual encounters. Kelly settled the case for two hundred fifty thousand dollars, no admission of guilt, no consequences, just money changing hands to me make the problem disappear.

5:02 This became the Kelly template. Abuse, get sued, pay settlement, continue abusing. The Chicago Sun Times, led by journalist Jim Deregatis, began investigating Kelly as early as two thousand. They reported that police had made two separate investigations into Kelly having sex with underage females, but both investigations were dropped due to lack of cooperation from the alleged victims. Here's something crucial to understand about predators like Kelly. They don't just abuse their victims. They train them to protect their abuser. Through a combination of psychological manipulation, financial dependency, and threats, victims become complicit in their own exploitation. Kelly perfected this system.

5:46 He would tell young girls they were special, that he loved them, that speaking out would destroy not just him, but them too. He created a world where victims felt responsible for protecting their abuser. February eighth, two thousand and two, everything should have changed. That's the day the Chicago Sun Times published a story about a videotape that allegedly showed Kelly engaging in sexual acts with an underage girl, including urinating on her. The tape had been sent to the newspaper by an anonymous source. The timing was perfect for maximum humiliation. Kelly was scheduled to perform at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics that same day. While millions watched him sing about inspiration and achievement, a video allegedly showing him abusing a child was making headlines across America.

6:37 By June two thousand and two, Kelly was indicted in Chicago on twenty one counts of child pornography. He was arrested in Florida, posted seven hundred fifty thousand dollars bail, and was released after one night in jail, one night for allegedly producing child pornography. This is where the story becomes even more infuriating. Despite overwhelming evidence, despite a video that allegedly showed Kelly's face clearly, despite years of accusations and settlements, the case dragged on for six years, six years during which Kelly continued to tour, continued to make music, continued to have access to young fans who worshiped him.

7:18 You know what's fascinating about the two thousand and two to two thousand and eight period, Kelly wasn't hiding, he wasn't lying low or avoiding the spotlight. He was making some of the biggest hits of his career, touring the world, and maintaining his image as the king of R and B. Because the music industry had made a calculation, Kelly's crimes were less important than Kelly's profits. During this period, Kelly released multiple albums that went platinum. He collaborated with the biggest names in music. He performed at major award shows. The machine kept rolling, and everyone involved record labels, radio stations, concert venues, fellow artists pretended like nothing was happening. Meanwhile, the evidence of his systematic abuse continued to mount. In twenty seventeen, Jim Darrow Gaddis published the explosive investigation for BuzzFeed that detailed what he called Kelly's cult. Multiple families had come forward claiming that Kelly was holding their adult daughters against their will in a network of homes in Chicago and Atlanta. The allegations were horrifying. Kelly allegedly controlled every aspect of these women's lives, from when they could eat and sleep to when they could use the bathroom.

8:31 He required them to call him daddy and seek permission for basic human functions. Former members of Kelly's inner circle described a systematic operation designed to break down young women's independence and turn them into completely dependent servants. The women were required to wear baggy clothes when not with Kelly, forbidden from looking at or speaking to other men, and isolated from their families and friends. This wasn't just abuse, it was psychological warfare design to destroy a person's sense of self. But perhaps most telling was the industry's response to these allegations silence. Major artists continued to collaborate with Kelly. Radio stations continued to play his music. Record labels continued to promote his work. The message was clear, as long as Kelly could still sell records, his victims were disposable.

9:24 The Washington Post conducted an extensive investigation into how the music industry enabled Kelly. They found that as early as nineteen ninety four, Kelly's tour manager had urged Jive Records to tell Kelly they wouldn't release his music if he continued having incidents with young women and miners after every concert. The label chose not to act on this warning epic records. Executives allegedly avoided viewing evidence of Kelly's crimes because they didn't want to be forced to drop him. When they were presented with a tape that allegedly showed Kelly having sex with an underage girl, one executive simply warned Kelly's assistant that if if it turned out to be Kelly on the tape, they would drop him, but they made sure not to actually confirm whether it was Kelly on the tape. Think about the moral calculation here. These executives would rather maintain plausible deniability than protect children from a predator.

10:18 Back in a moment, Welcome back to celebrity trials. I'm read Carter, and we're exploring how R. Kelly's decades of abuse were finally exposed. June thirteenth, two thousand and eight, after six years of legal proceedings, a Chicago jury found R. Kelly not guilty on all fourteen counts of child pornography. How did this happen? Simple the alleged victim, now an adult, refused to testify. Kelly's defense team successfully argued that prosecutors could didn't prove the identity of the girl in the video, and without her testimony, the case fell apart. It was a devastating blow to justice and a vindication of Kelly's strategy, train your victims so well that they'll protect you even when you're on trial for abusing them. Kelly's defense lawyer later questioned the acquittal and Kelly's public proclamations of innocence, suggesting even his own attorney had doubts about his client's claims.

11:25 But the acquittal gave Kelly a new lease on life. He continued touring, continued recording, and continued abusing the legal system had given him permission to keep going. For another decade, Kelly operated with virtual impunity. There were more allegations, more settlements, more young women who mysteriously disappeared into his orbit, but America had decided that as long as Kelly could still sing, his crimes didn't matter. Then something changed. The Me Too movement shifted our cultural understanding of power abuse and victim blaming. Suddenly, the excuses that had protected Kelly for decades, Why didn't they come forward sooner? Why did they stay? What were they expecting? Weren't acceptable anymore. In January twenty nineteen, Lifetime aired Surviving R. Kelly a six part documentary series that laid out three decades of abuse in excruciating detail. The documentary featured interviews with over fifty people, including former Kelly employees, family members of victims, and, most importantly, the survivors themselves.

12:34 For the first time, Kelly's victims were given a platform to tell their stories without being filtered through defense attorneys or hostile cross examination. They spoke about the grooming, the control, the isolation, and the systematic destruction of their sense of self. The documentary was a cultural earthquake. Within weeks, the Mute R. Kelly movement gained massive momentum. Protesters gathered outside Kelly's concerts, radio stations pulled his music, streaming services removed him from playlists. Most importantly, RCA Records dropped Kelly after the documentary aired. After decades of profiting from his music while ignoring his crimes, the label finally decided that the cost of association had become too high. But the real impact of Surviving R.

13:22 Kelly wasn't commercial. It was legal. February twenty second, twenty nineteen, Kelly was charged with ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in Chicago. The charges alleged that from nineteen ninety eight to twenty ten, Kelly had sexually abused four females, three of whom were miners at the time. But this was just the beginning. Federal investigators had been building a case that would dwarf the state charges. July eleventh, twenty nineteen, Kelly was arrested on federal charges including racketeering, sex trafficking, and obstruction of justice. These weren't just abuse charges, they were organized crime charges that treated Kelly's operation as a criminal enterprise. The federal indictment painted a picture of Kelly as the leader of a criminal organization that existed for one purpose, to facilitate his sexual abuse of miners and young women. Here's what's fascinating about the R. Kelly case.

14:22 For decades, everyone knew. The music industry knew, law enforcement knew, the media knew, his family and friends knew. His collaborators and employees knew. But as long as the hits kept coming and the money kept flowing, they all chose to look the other way. It wasn't ignorance that protected Kelly. It was wilful blindness motivated by greed. Record executives who claimed they never concerned themselves with Kelly's private life were lying. You don't accidentally ignore three decades of abuse allegations. You don't accidentally fail to know when teenage girls are being shuttled to your star's hotel rooms after every concert. The Kelly case reveals something ugly about American culture. We'll tolerate almost anything from someone who entertains us. We'll excuse the inexcusable, rationalize the unforgivable, and blame the victims instead of holding the perpetrator accountable. For thirty years, we treated R. Kelly's victims like they were lying, gold digging, attention seeking troublemakers.

15:27 Turns out the only liar was the man behind the microphone. Kelly's downfall wasn't inevitable. It was the result of a cultural shift that finally valued victim's voices over a predator's profits. Surviving R. Kelly didn't reveal anything new. It just presented old truths in a way that society was finally ready to hear. Tomorrow, we'll explore how federal prosecutors built an ironclad case against Kelly using racketeering laws designed to take down organized crime. Bosses. We'll see how Kelly's own words, his own rules, and his own systematic abuse became the evidence that finally brought him down, and we'll examine his current desperate attempts to escape justice, including wild claims about prison assassination plots that reveal the mindset of a predator who still can't accept responsibility for his crimes. I'm read Carter with celebrity trials. Remember, the most dangerous criminals aren't always the ones who look evil. Sometimes they're the ones who sound like angels. And the most important lesson from cases like this isn't just how monsters operate, but how society protects them until the cost of protection becomes too high.

16:41 Justice isn't always rhythmic, but it's always riveting.