Andrea Kelly was a 19-year-old dancer when she met the singer. And I said, it had to be one of the worst days in your life when we put your name in the newspaper in December 2000 and said you had taken this man's money. DEROGATIS: Yeah. And she wrote 28 columns in the first two years of R. Kelly reporting because she wanted the black community to stand up and pay attention for its daughters. He also managed Kelly at the time. I never twisted her arm, and she finally said, I'm ready to talk on the record. GROSS: Jim DeRogatis is the author of "Soulless: The Case Against R. But, yes, he beat me with an extension cord and, yes, he choked me and, yes, he starved me and, yes, he tried to break me down. And we were lucky we found 235 pages of the Hawkins case. But that’s just a preference. I didn’t check IDs.
GROSS: That's what the caller said, go to your mailbox. GROSS: So did that mean you had to tell their story anonymously, or were they willing to face the consequences of breaking the NDA?
Last week, R. Kelly was charged with 11 new counts of sexual abuse and assault.That’s in addition to the 10 counts of sexual abuse he was charged with in February, plus the civil charges he’s facing for falling behind on rent and child support. And then I think about having this long conversation with Roger Ebert in the middle of all this, about "Triumph Of The Will" and how there is no way to watch that film by Leni Riefenstahl and just talk about the incredible cinematography, without talking about hundreds of thousands of young men who were about to set Europe on fire and try to wipe out populations of people. Kelly." We had gotten nowhere. She claims that R. Kelly penned Michael Jackson's hit "You Are Not Alone" about her after she miscarried their child. As children, they both alleged to have been abuse victims. Bruce Kelly, the singer's older brother, appears to have known about his interest in younger women and didn't have issues with it. Stephanie "Sparkle" Edwards was once a promising protege of R. Kelly. There's an extraordinary columnist, and she's still hard at it at what's left of the Chicago Sun-Times, Mary Mitchell. When Carey confided this, he claims the singer silenced him. Another member of R. Kelly's entourage who seemed aware of the alleged abuse was producer Craig Williams. Jim DeRogatis is the author of “Let it Blurt: The Life & Times of Lester Bangs, America’s Greatest Rock Critic” (Broadway Books).
And I will add that in 19 years of reporting on Kelly, I have never had to issue a retraction or a clarification or been sued. They weren't going to break the NDA in 2000.