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Rick Kern/WireImageR. Kelly is strongly denying allegations that he’s the leader of a “cult” that has “brainwashed” young women into sexual slavery.
Kelly’s attorney, Linda Mensch, tells ABC News, “Mr. Robert Kelly is both alarmed and disturbed at the recent revelations attributed to him.
Mr. Kelly unequivocally denies such allegations and will work diligently and forcibly to pursue his accusers and clear his name.”
The allegations about Kelly stem from a BuzzFeed report that claims the R&B singer, who has homes near Chicago and Atlanta, is keeping up to six women at his various properties and controlling every aspect of their everyday lives, from what they eat and wear to their sexual encounters with him.
“You have to ask for food. You have to ask to go use the bathroom…[he’s] a master at mind control…He is a puppet master,” Cheryl Mack, who used to be a part of Kelly’s entourage, told the website.
In addition to Mack, two other former members of Kelly’s entourage — Kitti Jones and Asante McGee — confirm Kelly’s alleged lifestyle.
According to Mack and Jones, if any of the women broke any of Kelly’s “rules,” the singer would punish them physically and verbally.
“R. Kelly is the sweetest person you will ever want to meet,” McGee said. “But Robert” — that’s the singer’s given first name — “is the devil.”
Parents of the young women told Buzzfeed that they contacted the FBI and two police departments with concerns about their daughters. However, a wellness check by police in Illinois and Georgia in the past year revealed nothing was amiss, and police took no further action.
In January, a woman told Cook County police that she was “fine and did not want to be bothered,” according to Buzzfeed.
In 2008, the singer was acquitted of 14 charges of making child pornography. The author of the Buzzfeed report is the same journalist who reported on the case against Kelly in 2008.
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