R&B singer and songwriter R Kelly denied allegations that he sexually abused women and girls in his first public comments since being indicted last month.
“I didn’t do this stuff. This not me,” Kelly told CBS This Morning, saying that he was “fighting” for his life in an interview that was to air yesterday.
Excerpts were released on Tuesday.
He dismissed the allegations against him as rumors.
“Whether they’re old rumors, new rumors, future rumors, not true,” said Kelly, who became upset and emotional during the interview.
Kelly, 52, late last month pleaded not guilty in Chicago to 10 counts of aggravated criminal sex abuse.
He spent three nights behind bars and was released after coming up with US$100,000, 10 percent of the US$1 million bail set in court.
The sex acts are alleged to have occurred between May 1998 and January 2010, prosecutors said.
Kelly has been accused of sexual misconduct before.
In 2002 he was charged after allegedly filming himself having sex with a 14-year-old girl.
He was tried and acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008.
Now he says his reputation is being used against him.
“People are going back to my past, okay? That’s exactly what they’re doing. They’re going back to the past and they trying to add all of this stuff now to that. To make all this stuff that’s going on now feels real to people,” Kelly said.
He also addressed a report by BuzzFeed in 2017 that said Kelly had kept women as virtual sex slaves at homes he owns in Chicago and Atlanta.
Kelly denied ever holding anyone against their will.
“I don’t need to. Why would I? How stupid would it be for R Kelly, with all I’ve been through in my way, way past, to hold somebody,” he said.
“That’s stupid,” Kelly added, looking right into the camera.
The BuzzFeed allegations did not lead to any charges.
In January, a six-part documentary called Surviving R Kelly was released. It alleged that he engaged in sexual, mental and physical abuse of girls and women.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
RSS