Following The R. Kelly Story — His Defense Lawyer Finally Speaks Out!

Celebrities continue to distant themselves from R. Kelly. The latest to do this, as reported by ABC Night Live, was Lady Gaga, who herself was a survivor of sexual assault earlier in life.

She extended her support to these sexually assaulted women when she wrote: ‘I stand behind these women 1000%.’ She continued by saying, ‘believe them, know they’re suffering and in pain, and feel strongly that their voices should be heard and taken seriously.’

Well, not everyone thinks it should. R. Kelly’s criminal defense lawyer said, “It’s a bunch of … people looking for 15 minutes TMZ fame.” This, however, follows that we shouldn’t listen to these sexually assaulted women.

I wonder if he’d have said the same thing had one of these sexually assaulted women been his daughter. After all, being a criminal defense lawyer to R. Kelly makes him and his family famous. Hence, he’d barely think his daughter wanted fame had R. Kelly been alleged of sexually assaulting her.

This reminds me of Lady Gaga’s performance at the 2016 Grammy Awards where she was joined on stage by sexually assaulted women as she sang with these words, ‘till it happens to you, you wouldn’t know.’ Perhaps, part of the reasons R. Kelly’s criminal defense lawyer has reduced the sexual allegations leveled against his client may have been that it hadn’t happened to someone close to him.

I’m not, by this, wishing it would. But it seems to me and the interviewer that reducing these sexual allegations to just a 15 minutes TMZ fame undermines it. When asked whether he had watched the Docuseries at all, his answer was, ‘I watched snippets of it.’ Watching snippets alone doesn’t give you full knowledge of what’s been alleged. So how then did he make a judgment without it?