How R Kelly physically and sexually abused teenage Aaliyah while recording her debut album
R Kelly (in orange) in this file photo taken on September 17, 2019 after appearing at a hearing at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago, Illinois. On September 27, 202, he was convicted of leading a decades-long sex crime ring, with a New York jury finding the superstar singer guilty on all nine charges.
What you need to know:
- Aaliyah's rise to fame through her uncle Barry Hankerson's music industry connections led to her being victimised by R Kelly, who married her illegally when she was 15.
- After a $3 million settlement and annulment, Aaliyah broke free from both R Kelly and Jive Records, going on to achieve greater success with Virgin Records.
- The book "Baby Girl: Better Known As Aaliyah" reveals how R Kelly's own childhood trauma transformed him into a predator who exploited the music industry's lack of protections for young artists.
The shy, timid and impressionable Aaliyah Dana Haughton, was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 16, 1979, to parents Diane and Michael Haughton. She attended Gesu Catholic School in Detroit, where the family resettled, to expedite her father Michael's new occupation in a warehouse owned by Diane’s brother, Barry Hankerson. After Aaliyah began singing in church, her proud parents paid for years of vocal lessons at the Detroit High School for the Fine and Performing Arts.
At the age of ten, Aaliyah appeared in a television show, Star Search, and the next year, at age 11, she joined her uncle Barry's ex-wife and Motown icon Gladys Knight, on stage during Gladys' five-night performance stint at Bally’s Las Vegas Hotel. At age 14, Aaliyah became the first artist signed to Blackground Records, the boutique label her uncle Barry founded in 1993, in partnership with mainstream record label, Jive Records.
In 1984, legendary vocal coach Lena McLin had introduced Barry to a talented aspiring musician called Robert Sylvester Kelly (R Kelly), at Chicago’s famous Kenwood Academy. After R Kelly was contracted to Jive Records and released his first two studio albums Born into the 90s in 1990, and 12 Play in 1993, Barry became his manager and introduced his niece Aaliyah to his star client.
Aaliyah began recording her debut album, Age ain’t nothing but a number, with R Kelly writing, producing and titling all her songs. What Barry didn't know was that the then 26-year-old Robert had a troubling childhood, dominated by a constant influx of oppressive abuse that had psychologically wrecked his mental health and transformed him into a paedophile.
At the age of eight, Robert and his childhood playmate Lulu stood across Concord Drive from Beacon Hill Elementary School near the banks of the rain-swollen Thorn Creek River. Older kids appeared and started bullying them, Lulu was shoved into the river and she drowned as she was swept away by the rapid tide, leaving a divergent emotional scar that permanently tormented Robert’s conscience.
On another winter afternoon when Robert came home early from school, he stumbled on one of his aunts and her boyfriend having sex. Upon noticing him, his aunt directed him to take a photo of them with a Polaroid camera as they proceeded.
On one mitigating night, Robert who had fallen asleep on the living room couch was awakened by his older step sister Theresa. She proceeded to perform oral sex on him and threatened him with physical harm if he disclosed the encounter.
Growing up in lower income American inner-city projects, known in pop-culture as, the 'hood, the number-one street code was never to 'snitch.' The defilement by his teenage sister Theresa, moved on to sexual intercourse and continued for six years. Regardless of the number of times the abuse occurred, Robert was compelled to abide by the street code of not 'snitching', and never divulged his defilement to anyone, as his trepidation of the repercussions grew to debilitating shame.
Subsequently, a neighbour that Robert and his two brothers Bruce and Carrey referred to as Mr Henry, sexually assaulted Robert repeatedly. When his single mother Joann discovered the atrocity, Mr Henry bribed her with $5,000 to withdraw the preceding police charges.
By the time Robert was a young adult, the cumulative lingering effects of traumatic childhood experiences had diluted and contaminated his mind. Sending a constellation of disingenuous psychological messages to his subconscious mind about what sex is and how it's to be expressed. When he met Aaliyah, the corrosive mental implications had evolved into an uncontrollable urge of preying on numerous underage female victims in the suburbs of Maywood and Bellwood, on the West Side of Chicago.
R Kelly began defiling Aaliyah during her first recording sessions and their interaction was rooted in intimate grooming and latent sexual violence. He regularly battered her, while exploiting her innocence and naivety.
According to Kathy Iandoli who authored Baby Girl: Better Known As Aaliyah, abusive patterns don’t discriminate and to paedophiles, prey is prey, and Aaliyah fell prey to R Kelly nefarious evil instincts.
Kathy expresses how after a gig in Orlando Florida while on tour with hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa, R Kelly returned to Chicago immediately before the next show in Miami. Aaliyah had reneged and run away from home and she urgently demanded to see him. When R Kelly arrived, Aaliyah confided in him that she was pregnant with his child.
R Kelly’s accountant, Derrel McDavid, and attorney, Gerald Margolis, convinced him to marry his protégé Aaliyah. His chaperone Demetrius Smith obtained a Cook County marriage certificate at city hall in suburban Maywood, using a bootleg ID he bought for Aaliyah in 'Jewtown,' Chicago’s famous Maxwell Street Market.
R Kelly then surprised Aaliyah, whose facial expression was dominated by petrification, with a discreet marriage ceremony in the third-floor room at the Sheraton Gateway Suites in suburban Rosemont. She was involuntarily persuaded to lie about her age, while successively signing a marriage certificate as an 18 year old instead of her biological age of 15.
After the coercive wedding, Aaliyah travelled back to her parents' home in Detroit, and divulged to them and her uncle Barry Hankerson details of the event, and they immediately arranged an annulment.
On September 29, 1994, less than a month after the unconstitutional union, the marriage was annulled. According to the stipulations of the annulment, R Kelly paid $3 million in damages to Aaliyah and her family and severed all personal and professional contact with her. The two parties signed a non-disclosure agreement, where they pledged to avoid any public comment about their relationship. There was, however, no criminal action taken towards reprimanding R Kelly, and he continued defiling other girls.
Barry Hankerson and the Haughtons belatedly extended their vigilance and went to Jive Records CEO Clive Calder’s office and convinced him to release Aaliyah from her recording contract. They came to the understanding that after the paedophile marriage, Aaliyah would never receive consummate promotion if she was to stay on the same label as R Kelly.
Unlike many of R Kelly's victims, Aaliyah’s career thrived after she split from him. When she left Jive, she was signed by Richard Branson's Virgin Records, where she released her second studio album, One in a Million in August 1996, which achieved triple-platinum status by selling over three million copies.
Jeff Anthony is a novelist, a Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre @jeffbigbrother
