Celebrity News:

R. Kelly is supposed to go on trial in Chicago on child-sex charges next month, more than five years after a videotape came to light of a figure the police say is the singer performing various sex acts with and on an under-aged girl.

Hitsville’s ongoing feature, R. Kelly SexFacts™, has been provided as a public service to the many, many folks who have written about R. Kelly but who seem to have been unaware of many of the, ah, pungent aspects of this story.

Or you can think of it all as R. Kelly’s Greatest Hits—"hits," that is, in the sexual predator sense of the term.

Now it’s time to wrap up, and present the story thus far.

N.B.: this is a compelling tale, but a little bit barfy as well.

And remember, kids: R. Kelly SexFacts"™ are based entirely on reporting in reputable publications!



The R. Kelly case started when Jim DeRogatis, the pop critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, and Abdon M. Pallasch, the paper’s legal reporter, wrote a 3000-word story detailing the Chicago star’s penchant for young girls. It was published way back in December 2000—the day before a sold-out Christmas concert by the singer at the city’s United Center!



The story detailed the first sex suit against Kelly, including the $250,000 out-of-court settlement that resulted. The pair also talked with a woman who said she’d had sex with Kelly as a 15-year-old, and even had sex with him and another girl. Accusations #’s 1 and 2!



According to the story, Kelly met the girls by hanging out with the choir at his old high school, the scamp!



A year later, DeRogatis received a phone call telling him to check his mailbox. In it was a videotape showing Kelly having sex with a young girl. The girl’s aunt identified her, and Kelly. In the tape, the singer called her by her first name; she called him "Daddy." Accusation #3.



Besides a variety of sex acts, the girl urinates on the floor at "Daddy’s" direction. "Daddy" then urinates into her mouth.



After the tapes came to light, Kelly’s lawyer said this: "The fact is there is no tape of R. Kelly having sex. There have been reports in the media of different tapes, and none of them agrees with the other. If someone does say there is a tape out there, those claims are false—absolutely false."



The lawyer hired San Francisco investigator Jack Palladino to find out who might be trying to smear Kelly’s name by, presumably, making and releasing a fake videotape!



The Chicago Tribune weighed in, too! Kelly was sued for an "indecent sexual relationship" in 2000 and 2001 with an Epic records intern, who was 17 at the time, the paper reported. (The story named the woman and quoted her attorney.) Kelly settled the matter out of court! Accusation #4.



According to the same story, the same lawyer settled a similar lawsuit that charged Kelly with having sex with yet another girl when she was a minor. (She was named as well.) Accusation #5.



A few months later, the original girl’s aunt, an R&B singer named Stephanie Edwards, who records under the name Sparkle and was once Kelly’s protege, again confirmed, this time in an LA radio interview, that the girl in the video was her niece, who was 14 at the time—and 12 when she met Kelly!



After the interview, the station’s program director said the station’s programmers were debating whether they should stop playing Kelly’s music.



In 1994, Kelly married a 15-year old girl. Married! Her name was Aaliyah Haughton; she was a singer and a protege of Kelly’s with whom, associates have said, he was having an affair. Without telling her what was going on, Kelly arranged an impromptu wedding at a suburban Chicago hotel and then swept her toward a plane. Fortunately, the girl called her parents. They came and got her and, articles have said, the pair never saw each other again. Accusation #6.



As rumors surfaced about the union, Kelly lied about it. But then Vibe magazine found a marriage certificate, on which Haughton’s age was listed as 18. The union was annulled a short time later. (Over the next six years or so Haughton, under the stage name Aaliyah, became a fairly big star before dying in a plane crash in the Bahamas in 2001.)