Hi, I’m Anastasia Tsioulcas.
And I’m Colin Dwyer.
And we’re here to talk about R. Kelly.
The story begins in 1994
when Kelly married his protege, Aaliyah.
He was 27 years old.
She was just 15.
The marriage was annulled within months, but
that didn't put an end to the questions it raised.
In 2002,
journalist Jim DeRogatis,
who helped publish the first allegations
that Kelly had sex with teenage girls
just a year or two earlier,
received a videotape
that purported to show the singer
having sex with a minor.
And he revealed that tape’s existence
in the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper.
Just a few months later,
authorities charged Kelly with
21 counts of child pornography.
Here, things start to slow down.
Seven of those counts were later dropped,
and by the time the case went to trial
in 2008,
the alleged victim was in her 20s.
More than a dozen witnesses
identified her in the video,
but neither she nor her parents testified.
It took just a few hours
for the jury to acquit him on all charges.
Nearly a decade would pass
before allegations against Kelly resurfaced
Jim DeRogatis,
the same reporter who published
the first allegations,
once again
broke a big story on the singer,
this time in BuzzFeed.
He reported that Kelly was living with
multiple women,
dictating every aspect of their lives,
from what they ate
to when they slept,
and that he recorded their sexual encounters.
Around the same time,
a protest movement gathered steam:
#MuteRKelly.
The online campaign,
mostly led by black women,
tried to pressure Kelly’s backers
to cut ties with him.
We reached another milestone
at the start of 2019.
That’s when the Lifetime TV network 
released its six-part documentary series
called Surviving R. Kelly.
The series doesn’t break any new accusations,
but it does include
on-camera interviews
with several accusers.
The drumbeat calling for action only grew louder.
Former collaborators apologized
for working with Kelly.
His label dropped him.
Now R. Kelly is once again facing criminal charges. 
In February, 
he was indicted in Cook County, Illinois, 
on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse. 
That indictment included four alleged victims,
three of whom were minors at the time of the alleged incidents, 
which spanned from 1998
to 2010. 
He pleaded not guilty on all charges. 
About two weeks later, 
he was arrested again,
this time for failing to pay over $160,000 
in back child support. 
That rearrest came just hours after
CBS began airing clips of an interview
that the singer did with journalist Gayle King. 
He was very emotional: 
crying, standing up
and shouting directly into the camera. 
And again, 
Kelly proclaimed his innocence. 
Get the latest updates
on these allegations 
and dig deeper into the timeline
at npr.org. 
