R. Kelly banned the women who lived with him from watching "Surviving R. Kelly," an accuser testified Tuesday at his sex crimes trial.- The 2019 documentary detailed
sexual abuse allegations against the R&B singer. - The accuser also testified Kelly coughed throughout
Gayle King 's interview with two of his "girlfriends" to remind them of his presence in the room.
R. Kelly forbade his "girlfriends" from watching a documentary series that detailed sexual abuse allegations against him, an accuser testified at the singer's sex crimes trial Tuesday.
The accuser, who testified under a pseudeonym, said Kelly warned her and another woman living with him about the "Surviving R. Kelly" documentary's January 2019 release on Lifetime. "Surviving R. Kelly" featured interviews with other young women who had lived with the singer, and who described living in a cultlike environment where they performed sex acts on demand while severing ties with their families.
"He did let us know at the time that a documentary was coming out, and that everything in it was false," the woman said.
The accuser, continuing testimony from Monday, said she and Kelly had a five-year relationship that began when she was 17.
She testified that over time, Kelly imposed increasingly byzantine rules, forbidding her and other "girlfriends" he lived with to leave their rooms without his permission and punishing them when they neglected to call him "daddy." The woman also detailed Kelly's harrowing punishments for infractions, saying he would beat her and forced her to eat feces.
Kelly's trial in Brooklyn began last week, and is expected to last four weeks in total. Federal prosecutors first charged him in June 2019 with a litany of charges, alleging he directed people to procure women for sex.
'We were told to change the channel'
"Surviving R. Kelly" was first released in January 2019, following a resurgence of interest in the singer's treatment of women. It arrived in the wake of the #MeToo movement and a July 2017 BuzzFeed News article about Kelly's "sex cult" by Chicago-based reporter Jim DeRogatis, who broke multiple stories that led to the singer's 2008 trial on child pornography charges, for which he was acquitted.
The accuser testified that ahead of the documentary's release, Kelly told the women who lived with him not to watch the program and that he had instructed his attorneys to send cease-and-desist letters to people involved in it.
"We were told to change the channel," the accuser said.She said Kelly also asked the women who lived with him to vouch for him publicly.
"He said, if there was a time to stand up and speak publicly, would we?" she testified. "And we said, 'yes.'"
By March 2019, most of the young women who had lived with Kelly in his various homes had left. The only remaining women were the accuser who testified Tuesday and another who she referred to as "Joy."
Kelly asked both of them to speak with Gayle King for a
King interviewed both women with Kelly sitting elsewhere in the hotel room, where they defended his conduct. She testified that Kelly gave a distinctive cough throughout the interview to remind them "he was in the room with us," adding that the answers she gave King during the interview were not "truthful."
The woman testified that by October 2019, several months after Kelly's arrest, she had left the singer's home, never to return or speak with him again.
In January 2020, she said, she finally comprehended the scope of abuse she had experienced and spoke with prosecutors.