shut up R. Kelly Aaliyah and her family through a non-disclosure agreement, following his marriage and subsequent dissolution to the 15-year-old singer.
The new allegations were made in the latest installment of the Lifetime series “Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired Jan. 2 and Jan. 3. The docuseries centered around the 2022 federal trial of R. Kelly where the NDA was thrown into the courtroom as evidence. The late Aaliyah was Jane Doe #1 on trial.
Surviving R. Kelly uses Aaliyah’s story to spotlight her as a victim of R. Kelly, after years of the media and music industry exposing her marriage to the now-convicted singer in the ’90s.
Olya’s first album in 1994 was called “Age is nothing but a number” and was recorded when she was 14 years old. R. Kelly—who was a highly educator and was first introduced to her by her uncle, executive and music director Barry Hankerson—was the main songwriter and producer of the album. At the time of the album’s release, rumors were circulating that 15-year-old Aaliyah and 27-year-old R. Kelly were in a relationship.
The couple secretly married in August 1994, Alia was 15 at the time, but the marriage certificate falsified her age as 18. The marriage was annulled by Alia’s parents in February 1995.
In “Surviving R. Kelly,” he interviews on-camera people from the R. Kelly camp who were in the room when the couple got married to express their regrets about the marriage. Individuals close to both R. Kelly and Aaliyah share new details about the allegedly fraudulent legal agreement between R. Kelly and the Aaliyah family.
Members of Aaliyah’s family declined to comment to the producers of “Surviving R. Kelly” in a statement that aired as part of the Lifetime documentary series.
R. Kelly’s childhood friend and ex-sire, Gem Pratt, appears in “Surviving R. Kelly” and claims that Aaliyah’s father was angry about the marriage and forced the annulment. Pratt claims that Aaliyah’s family has a contractual arrangement with R. Kelly that states that they will not press charges against him for illegal marriage after the marriage is annulled; In turn, R. Kelly sold the rights to his first three albums to the Aaliyah family, giving them a financial incentive.
“Her father didn’t want her anywhere near him,” Pratt says in the docuseries.
Many of the on-camera guests on “Surviving R. Kelly” have described the marriage as a way to get R. Kelly to avoid jail for statutory rape.
Recent episodes of “Surviving R. Kelly” made time to cover the enablers in R. Kelly’s camp, who turned a blind eye to his abuse over three decades and helped the convicted musician make arrangements to see his victims, including booking flights to minors. Girls to cross state lines for private meetings. One of the plaintiffs who appeared as a legal expert in the documentary series, R. Kelly as “running a criminal enterprise”. “Everyone has a financial incentive to look the other way,” said another expert.
“He couldn’t do it himself. This wasn’t a one-man operation,” said Pratt, the former security guard for the R. He later said. Most people in that camp knew that many of these girls were minors. They had to.”
The NDA originated in the trial of R. Kelly in New York in 2022, but it wasn’t widely covered. The use of non-disclosure agreements has become a hot-button issue in sexual harassment cases, particularly in the workplace, highlighting the power imbalance with the perpetrator or companies silencing victims through coercive legal documents.
Prior to R. Kelly’s trial, journalist Jim DeRogatis—the reporter who broke the news of R. Kelly’s sexual assault—disclosed. Kelly for the first time in more than two decades – the NDA used by R. Kelly vs. Alia. A few years ago, DeRogatis spoke about the documents that were leaked to him, explaining in an interview That the cancellation and the legal case filed by Alia against R. Kelly has been stamped.
“It’s a shocking document,” he said. “Non-disclosure agreement on her and Kelly’s part, covenants not to pursue further legal claims of physical assault. So it wasn’t just underage sex, but beating, allegedly according to that court document.”
Talking to diverse About the final installment of “Surviving R. Kelly”, executive producer Jesse Daniels said the producing team made sure Aaliyah was not exploited in the docuseries, and wished to shed light on the abuse she was tragically subjected to by R. Kelly as a teenager. We’ve had a lot of conversations about how we tell Aaliyah’s story each time because we really want to honor her legacy. “But what she’s been through, we can’t turn our backs,” Daniels said.
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