A look at allegations over the years against singer R. Kelly

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A look at allegations over the years against singer R. Kelly

2019-02-23 05:02 Last Updated At：05:10

R&B star R. Kelly has been dogged for years by allegations that he sexually abused women and underage girls. He and his attorneys have repeatedly denied allegations of sexual misconduct.

Here is a lot at some of the different accusations that have been made against him:

CHICAGO, AUGUST 1994:

Kelly, then 27, wed Aaliyah Dana Haughton, then 15, at a suburban Chicago hotel. The singer had been his protege, and he wrote and produced her 1994 debut album, "Age Ain't Nothing But A Number." The marriage was later annulled, and the two refused to confirm it happened. In 2001, Aaliyah died in a light aircraft crash in the Abaco Islands, Bahamas.

CHICAGO, DECEMBER 1996:

A Chicago woman, Tiffany Hawkins, sued Kelly and his recording and management companies alleging she suffered personal injuries and emotional harm because she had sex with the singer in 1991, when she was 15. The relationship ended in 1994 when she turned 18. The woman said she met Kelly while a freshman at Kenwood Academy, a high school Kelly attended but didn't graduate from. She was seeking $10 million in damages, but the Chicago Sun-Times reported in December 2000 that she settled for $250,000. Over the next two years, Kelly settled three more cases out of court but denied wrongdoing.

CHICAGO, JUNE 2002:

Kelly was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography. The 33-year-old singer was accused based on a videotape allegedly showing him having sex with an underage girl. The Sun-Times reported the then-14-year-old girl was the daughter of an associate of the singer. Kelly was acquitted on all counts in June 2008.

GEORGIA, JULY 2017:

BuzzFeed reported the singer lured women into "cult-like" relationships. The internet media outlet reported that Kelly was keeping women aged 18 to 31 in properties in Chicago and Georgia, where he abused and secluded them from their families. No charges resulted because the women were of legal age. When contacted by police, one of the women told authorities she was "fine" and didn't want to be bothered. At the same time, Jerhonda Pace said she became sexually involved with Kelly when she was a 16-year-old fan.

NEW YORK, MAY 2018:

Faith Rodgers filed a lawsuit in New York alleging Kelly sexually abused and demeaned her, locked her in rooms and vehicles for punishment and infected her with herpes. Rodgers said in the lawsuit that the abuse took place during a roughly yearlong relationship. Rodgers made the same allegations in a police report filed in April 2018 in Dallas that Kelly's management team denied. Rodgers, then 20, said in a television interview that Kelly, 51, instructed her to call him "daddy" and told her his goal was to teach her how to have sex like a "mature woman."

NEW YORK, JUNE 2018:

Andrea Kelly, R. Kelly's ex-wife and mother of his three children, revealed in a television interview the singer abused her throughout their 13-year marriage and despair led her consider suicide. During a later interview, she said their arguments often ended in violence, including an altercation in which she said he pulled her left arm behind her back and pushed his forearm against her neck. "I think the reason why I think I made it out is because I said, 'Robert, you're going to kill me. I can't breathe,'" she recalled in an October 2018 interview on ABC's "The View." Andrea Kelly, who was married to the singer from 1996 to 2009, said she was speaking out to save lives and bring validity to other women's stories of alleged abuse at the hands of the entertainer.

CHICAGO, JANUARY 2019:

Lifetime network begins airing the docuseries "Surviving R. Kelly." The series looked at the singer's history, and allegations that he has sexually abused women and teenage girls. The series presented first-hand accounts of years of alleged abuse against young girls and women by Kelly. Several subjects noted the singer and his entourage purposefully targeted Kenwood Academy girls at a nearby McDonald's. He has denied doing anything wrong, however there has been fallout, with reports his record label dropped him. The #MeToo and #MuteRKelly movements have demanded his music be dropped from streaming services and radio play.

CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 2019

Kelly is charged with 10 counts of aggravated sexual abuse involving four victims , including at least three between the ages of 13 and 17. Some of the alleged abuse went back at least as far as 1998, according to charging documents. An indictment unsealed Friday specifically referenced abuse that took place around Feb. 18, 2003.

Storm-battered South is again under threat. A boy swept into a drain fights for his life

2024-05-10 02:46 Last Updated At：02:51

COLUMBIA, Tenn. (AP) — Dangerous storms crashed over parts of the South on Thursday even as the region cleaned up from earlier severe weather that spawned tornadoes, killed at least three people, and gravely injured a boy who was swept into a storm drain as he played in a flooded street.

A heavy line of storms swept into Atlanta near the end of the morning rush hour. Busy hub airports in Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina, reported delays. The National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center cited an “enhanced risk” for severe weather from Texas to South Carolina.

The storms continue a streak of torrential rains and tornadoes this week from the Plains to the Midwest and, now, the Southeast. Since Monday, 39 states have been under threat of severe weather and at least four people have died. On Wednesday, 98 million people were under some sort of severe weather risk, said Evan Bentley, a Storm Prediction Center forecaster.

The weather comes on the heels of a stormy April in which the U.S. had 300 confirmed tornadoes, the second-most on record for the month and the most since 2011.

More than 170,000 homes and businesses still lacked power Thursday afternoon in several Southern states after storms the night before, according to PowerOutage.us.

One in Tennessee damaged homes, injured people, toppled power lines and trees, and killed a 22-year-old man in a car in Claiborne County, north of Knoxville, officials said. A second person was killed south of Nashville in Columbia, the seat of Maury County, where officials said a tornado damaged or destroyed more than 140 homes.

Bob Booth had just gotten home to Columbia from Georgia and was sitting down to watch television when he heard a “crazy racket.”

“I get up and look out, and it was all hell breaking loose outside,” Booth said. “Then the top half of one of my trees goes down across the road.”

Retired pastor Walter Shell said he and his wife grabbed their two dogs and headed for the basement when his phone alerted him to a tornado.

“It missed where me and my wife were standing by about 4 inches. It went around,” he said. “It pays to pray, I can tell you.”

Torrential rains led to a flash flood emergency and water rescues northeast of Nashville, and the weather service issued a tornado emergency, its highest alert level, for nearby areas.

A 10-year-old boy was seriously injured in Christiana, southeast of Nashville, when he got caught in a storm drain and swept under streets while playing with other children as adults cleared debris, his father, Rutherford County Schools Superintendent Jimmy Sullivan, posted on social media.

The boy, Asher, emerged in a drainage ditch and survived after being given CPR, “but the damage is substantial,” Sullivan posted on Facebook, asking for prayers. A vigil was planned for Thursday afternoon at the school district office.

“Asher needs a miracle,” Sullivan wrote.

Schools were closed Thursday in Rutherford and several other Tennessee counties. In Georgia, some districts north of Atlanta canceled in-person classes or delayed start times because of storm damage overnight that included fallen trees on houses and vehicles around Clarkesville. No injuries were reported there.

“We’re just trying to clean up right now and wait for the next round,” said Lynn Smith, director of the Habersham County Emergency Management Agency.

A strong tornado damaged at least 20 homes in northern Alabama’s DeKalb County and caused injuries but no deaths, officials said.

In North Carolina, a state of emergency was declared Wednesday night for Gaston County, west of Charlotte, after a storm that toppled power lines and trees, including one that landed on a car. One person in the car was killed, and another was taken to a hospital, officials said.

The storms followed heavy rain, strong winds, hail and tornadoes in parts of the central U.S. on Monday, including a twister that ripped through an Oklahoma town and killed one person. On Tuesday, the Midwest took the brunt of the bad weather. Tornadoes touched down in parts of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, according to the weather service.

Michigan's Kalamazoo area was hard hit as a FedEx facility was ripped apart, with downed power lines trapping about 50 people.

Tornadoes were also confirmed near Pittsburgh, in central Arkansas and in northern West Virginia. The West Virginia twister was at least the 11th tornado this year in the state, which sees two tornadoes in an average year.

Both the Plains and Midwest have been hammered by tornadoes this spring.

Associated Press journalists around the country contributed to this report, including Travis Loller, Jeff Amy, Joey Cappelletti, Ed White, Sarah Brumfield, Adrian Sainz and John Raby.

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