Lifetime’s docuseries Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning concluded Saturday after new accusers detailed new allegations; R. Kelly’s brothers offered new details about rampant childhood sexual abuse in their family; and insiders alleged Kelly paid off more than a dozen girls, with the requirement that they sign non-disclosure agreements.
The docuseries premiered on Thursday, Jan. 2, and included five episodes airing over three nights. The second season debuted a year after the original six-part series premiered in January 2019, and was seen by 26.8 million viewers over multiple airings.
Related Story: R. Kelly Pleads Not Guilty to Bribery Charge Over Fake ID to Marry Aaliyah
Since then, the franchise has brought renewed attention to the decades-long sexual abuse allegations against the R&B singer, real name Robert Kelly, leading to his arrest in July 2019.
Kelly has maintained his innocence and pleaded not guilty to federal and state charges, including sex trafficking, child pornography, obstruction of justice, and kidnapping. As the singer, 52, sits in a Chicago jail awaiting trial, his accusers detailed horrifying allegations of physical and mental abuse in Part II, and spoke of being left emotionally damaged.
Below are nine shocking revelations in Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning.
Kelly’s Accusers Faced Death Threats After Going Public
Several accusers and their family members who participated in the original docuseries returned to talk about the threats and intimidation they faced over the past year.
The threats started with a private screening of Surviving R. Kelly, attended by survivors in December 2018. The gathering had to be evacuated because of a gun threat.
Returning accuser Jerhonda Pace said she was attacked while visiting a shopping mall in Illinois. “They tried to physically harm me,” she explained. Pace said the threats and taunts got so bad that she moved out of the state.
Others alleged Kelly’s team tried to intimidate them. Several accusers broke down as they said nude photos taken of them when they were with the singer, have been posted on websites devoted to discrediting his accusers.
Suicide Pact
Jerhonda Pace met Kelly at age 15. She moved in with the singer and said in Surviving R. Kelly Part II that he convinced her she would have no life without him. She claimed Kelly concocted a suicide pact and convinced her that she should kill herself if he went to jail.
She said he kept a stash of “suicide” pills in a jacket pocket just in case. “‘If something happens to me, you know where the pills are,'” she alleged he told her.
Pace said she was abused when she broke Kelly’s “rules,” which included everything from going to the bathroom, to speaking to others without his permission. Yet she remained by his side and agreed to the suicide pact. “I was really ready to take my own life,” she explained. “He was everything to me.”
Kelly’s First Accuser Said “Nobody Believed Me”
Tiffany Hawkins was one of the new survivors to speak out in Part II. She described herself as Kelly’s first accuser and said they met when she was 15. Hawkins was known at her Chicago high school for having a beautiful singing voice similar to Whitney Houston’s. A school employee, who appeared in the original docuseries, introduced her to Kelly who agreed to mentor the teenager.
Hawkins said she came from a troubled home, had little parental supervision, and spent long nights at Kelly’s house. She claimed she brought her young friends around him to allegedly participate in group sex.
She explained that she was known as “the cable girl” because she “hooked him up.”
After Hawkins got pregnant, she said Kelly refused to take a paternity test and told her not to bring it up again. She hired a lawyer and filed a civil lawsuit, claiming personal injuries and emotional damage as a result of an alleged sexual relationship with Kelly when she was a minor. She said she was offered a $200,000 settlement and told to sign an NDA. Hawkins said she took the money, when her allegations about Kelly fell on deaf ears. “Nobody believed me and after that it continued to happen again and again,” she stated.
Kelly Was Repeatedly Sexually Abused as a Child
The singer’s brothers Bruce Kelly (who was interviewed in jail) and Carey Kelly returned for Part II and offered details of widespread sexual abuse during their childhood years. Robert was abused between the ages of 6 to 14.
The brothers claimed a female family member molested Robert. Carey said that same relative abused him starting when he was just six years old.
Carey told a story of another sexual predator living their neighborhood, a 60-year-old man.
“Mr. Henry was the neighborhood uncle,” Carey recalled. “Everybody loved him and looked up to him.” The elderly man allegedly exposed himself when the brothers visited his apartment.
“When he turned around, he had pulled his private part out of his underwear and was holding it in his hand,” Carey recalled. He said he and his brothers ran out of the house, adding, “We literally fought for our lives to get out of that house.”
Carey claimed Mr. Henry developed a bond with Robert and molested him. Carey alleged the man paid their mother $5,000 to prevent her from going to the police.
Jive Records Accused Of Protecting Kelly
Jimmy Maynes, a former executive at Jive Records, talked about an emergency company meeting after copies of the “R. Kelly sex tape” began to circulate in 2002. Maynes recalled the people in the meeting watched the tape for a few seconds and were disturbed by what they saw.
Maynes said the top bosses dispatched him and another Jive employee to Chicago to “buy up as many tapes as we could.” He claimed he was told by his bosses that they had to take action because “Rob keeps the lights on around here.”
Kelly Allegedly Paid Off the Underage Girl in The Tape
The tape showed a man, which prosecutors said was Kelly, having sex with and urinating on a 14-year-old girl. Attorney Michael Avenatti, who has represented some of Kelly’s accusers, appeared in Part II. Avenatti alleged that the girl in the tape and her family “received $2 million” to maintain their silence and avoid testifying in Kelly’s 2008 trial. Kelly faced 13 counts of child pornography, but was acquitted of all charges.
Aaliyah told Damon Dash Kelly “Was a Bad Man”
Hip-hop mogul Damon Dash, who was in a relationship with Aaliyah when the pop star died in a plane crash in 2001, participated in Part II. He described Aaliyah as “the sacrificial lamb” in the Kelly saga.
R. Kelly’s former tour manager and personal assistant, Demetrius Smith, said in the original docuseries that he helped fraudulently obtain paperwork allowing a 15-year-old Aaliyah to claim she was 18 to marry the Bump N’ Grind singer. The marriage was annulled a few months later because of Aaliyah’s age.
In Part II, it was revealed that Aaliyah was the first female to sign an NDA regarding interactions with Kelly. Dash said Aaliyah would never talk about what happened with the singer. “She just said he was ‘a bad man,’ and she left it at that.”
Reporter Jim DeRogatis, who has investigated Kelly for decades and written a book about the singer, alleged that Kelly paid off at least a dozen girls and had them sign NDAs.
R. Kelly Has Loyal Supporters
Lindsey Perryman-Dunn, who worked for R. Kelly from 1999 to 2007, appeared for the first time in Part II. She said she helped her sister, Jennifer Emrich, get a job with Kelly as well. The sisters staunchly defended the singer and called the women in the original series liars.
“The women I saw in the docuseries were the type of women that Robert would have picked,” said Lindsey Perryman-Dunn. “And you know what they’re upset about? That they didn’t get the limelight until they were on Lifetime television.”
Perryman-Dunn went on to say she believes Kelly is being tried in the court of public opinion. “I believe in the American justice system,” she said. “I do not believe in the justice system that is going on right now which is just the public justice system. Right now the public is prosecuting R. Kelly, not the police.”
Azriel Clary Has Returned Home
R. Kelly’s two live-in girlfriends, Azriel Clary, 22, and Joycelyn Savage, 24, sat down for an explosive interview with Gayle King in March 2019. The two defended Kelly and pushed back against their parents’ claims that they were being held against their will.
As R. Kelly loomed in the background of the CBS This Morning interview, Clary argued that her parents shouldn’t be concerned about her well-being.
At the end of Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning, it was revealed that Clary moved out of Kelly’s apartment at Trump Tower in Chicago as of December 2019, and has been reunited with her family.
Why keep showing this show over and over? Who are these people trying to convince? These women goes on television looking like they are applying for a job. If they are hurt look the part and act like it. You can’t convince everyone. As for as the parents who took part of the Lifetime show it did not put them in the spot light they show a lack of wisdom on there part.