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Reporter Who Broke R. Kelly Story: Abuse Was In ‘Full View Of The World’

In November 2000, Jim DeRogatis, then music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, received an anonymous fax in response to a review of he’d written of R&B star R. Kelly’s album TP-2.com. The fax, DeRogatis says, read:

I’ve known Robert [R. Kelly] for many years and I’ve tried to get him to get help, but he just won’t do it. So I’m telling you about it hoping that you or someone at your newspaper will write an article and then Robert will have no choice but to get help. … Robert’s problem — and this is the thing that goes back many years — is young girls.

DeRogatis began investigating the allegations in the fax and, in December 2000, he and his writing partner, Abdon Pallasch, published a story in the Sun-Times alleging that Kelly had engaged in sex with teenage girls. Kelly has denied all allegations.

DeRogatis expected the response to the story to be explosive, but instead it was muted. It was the beginning of his coverage of a story that he would chase for the next 19 years.

In February 2002, DeRogatis received another anonymous tip, this time in the form a videotape purportedly showed Kelly having sex with and urinating on an underage girl. “It was horrifying,” DeRogatis says of the tape. “The worst thing I’ve ever had to witness in my life.”

DeRogatis handed the tape over to the police, and in May 2002 Kelly was indicted on 21 counts of child pornography, seven of which were dropped before the case went to trial. In 2008, a Chicago jury acquitted Kelly of the remaining 14 charges.

Still, allegations of abuse continued to swirl. In January 2019, Lifetime aired Surviving R. Kelly, a six-part docuseries focusing on Kelly’s alleged victims and their family members. In February of this year, he was charged in Cook County, Ill., on 10 counts of sexual abuse; last month, those prosecutors indicted him for a second time on new charges of sexual assault and abuse.

But DeRogatis maintains that the Illinois charges “barely scratched the surface” of Kelly’s misdeeds. “This has happened in full view of the world for 30 years while he sold 100 million albums, opened the winter Olympics,” he says. “It all happened as everybody watched and nobody did anything.”

DeRogatis recounts his investigation into the singer in the book, Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly.

Photo: R. Kelly leaves the Leighton Courthouse in Chicago, Ill., on May 7, 2019, following a hearing in relation to the sex abuse allegations made against him.
Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images