I always thought R. Kelly was a sketchy man when I heard about him having sex with a minor back in 2002. Not to mention that he also peed in her mouth. (Ugh.) While he was never jailed for his crimes, it doesn’t mean he’s stopped his predatory ways. Last night, reports found that R. Kelly has been allegedly holding women against their will in a “sex cult.”

Chicago Sun-Times writer Jim DeRogatis interviewed the women’s family members and R. Kelly’s former acquaintances about the singer’s manipulative ways. One mother shared how she introduced her daughter, who was 19 at the time, to R. Kelly in hopes of boosting her music career. R. Kelly would take the young singer to tours and promised to produce an album for her. Instead, he would allegedly only use her for sex. As of writing, the woman apparently still lives with R. Kelly and has a relationship with him.

“It was as if she was brainwashed. [She] looked like a prisoner—it was horrible. I hugged her and hugged her. But she just kept saying she’s in love, and [Kelly] is the one who cares for her,” the mother said. This was also brought up to the police, but they saw nothing wrong as the woman is considered an adult and doing it out of her own free will.

R. Kelly’s former acquaintances (Cheryl Mack, Kitti Jones, and Asante McGee) supported these claims, saying that they were treated like sex slaves when they stayed with him. “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,” Cheryl said, adding that he also controlled the women’s phones and would abuse them when they interacted with other men.

As of last summer, at least five women allegedly live in R. Kelly’s Chicago and Atlanta “guest houses.” Some of them were teenagers when they met.

Meanwhile, R. Kelly “unequivocally denies” the accusations. But when you have a track record of having underaged sex and secretly marrying 15-year-old Aaliyah by falsifying marriage documents—all of which he settled out of court—it’s hard to believe that none of this is true. To quote YouTuber Philip DeFranco, “I’ll never really understand how he was found ‘not guilty’ [of all these claims.]”

[Buzzfeed News and The Guardian]

Photo courtesy of Vogue

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