R. Kelly: Guilty Guilty Guilty (Open thread)

Photo: Whitten Sabbatini/The New York Times/Redux

On Monday afternoon, when Sparkle learned R. Kelly had been found guilty of all charges in his federal sex-crimes trial, she covered her eyes and bawled. Perhaps no one has waited longer for this news. For the past 20 years, Sparkle, whose real name is Stephanie Edwards, has been trying to convince the world that Kelly sexually abused her teenage niece. The decades-long crusade cost the 46-year-old her closest relationships and stifled her own music career.

Sparkle first introduced her then-12-year-old niece to Kelly in 1997 — a decision that still haunts her to this day. Back then she’d thought, who better to help launch the aspiring tween rapper’s career than the musical genius producing Sparkle’s first album? Four years later, in 2001, she watched a horrifying video that changed her life: It showed Kelly having sex with, and urinating on, her then-14-year-old niece, Sparkle says. “I was horrified and disgusted,” she told me. “I needed to act quickly, and that’s what I did.”

She called the police and went public with the allegation in a radio interview the following year. She later testified in Kelly’s 2008 trial, in which he was found not guilty of child-pornography charges, and told her story once again in the explosive Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly in 2019. But until today’s verdict, it often felt like she was shouting into a void.

Her niece’s parents stood by Kelly — who was accused of buying their silence in a recently unsealed federal indictment — and didn’t speak to Sparkle for a decade. She watched comedians and TV shows mock the “pee tape” while bootleg copies were hawked on street corners across America for $10. The music industry wanted nothing to do with her. Finally, the justice system, and the wider culture, has caught up with Sparkle’s clarion call that Kelly be held accountable. She spoke with the Cut about what it’s like to hear a guilty verdict, and how speaking out against someone so powerful has come with great personal loss.

https://www.thecut.com/2021/09/interview-sparkle-on-r-kellys-guilty-verdict.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab#comments