R. Kelly: Ongoing Legal Process

Josh -- aaliyah said it best. age ain't... i.e. maturity doesn't come at the stroke of midnight but differently for different people. besides, two teen can consentually screw but not an adult and a teen, which makes no sense.

I'll buy your persecution complex when your mother sues you.

For 'adult' read 'person competent to consent'. I don't mean to imply a hard and fast cutoff is best. (Though there may be good reasons for setting such an age in the law.)

josh: the problem here is there's no way to determine what the sitch was since the gal who they claim it is sez it isn't her. Was she competent to consent? Talking to family and friends if not her might help, but they deny it too. & anyway that'll never happen coz the law only treats age.

ethan: sometimes i think you don't wanna grow up at all.

So I want to argue here that my position on this has little to do with what I like in art & elsewhere & much to do with other concerns -- like why should the govt. decide what is and isn't healthy and does it EVER help with they do try to?

I don't want to idealize this stuff (golden showers = ew) but I mean you can regulate consent, but who the fuck can regulate the messy ugly world of emotions & expectations.

Also, why R. Kelley and not like every rock band that's had teenage girl groupies like ever? I mean I don't remember a scandal like this since Jerry Lewis & that was only because they got married and thus threw it in everyone's face and ALSO were cousins.

The U.K. was wrong to fuck with him, but read Tosches' book and you'll see that he wasn't a nice guy to Mrs. Myra Lee neither.

Now then, Sterling, where do you stand on Michael Jackson?

ie. I had sex while underage (three years underage --> I was fifteen) with a guy maybe ten years older. I don't think the guy was behaving badly towards me, I don't regret it, it was fun etc. BUT that doesn't mean that I don't think the law saying it's technically "non-consensual" shouldn't be there (though age of consent should def. be lowered to 16 for homosexuals, obv.). I know too many people who were in similar situations and who were fucked up by the experience. In that sense maybe the guy I had sex with and R Kelly are both stupid and not evil, but robbing a bank can be stupid and not evil too.

(also do not underestimate Ramosi's powers of classification. I should know!)

Ramosi -- does the govt. go after the prostitutes or the pimps? I've mainly seen these laws used in rotten ways and selectively. People are either mature enough to fuck up their own lives or they aren't, and the line is different for each person and each situation. I'm not saying that there is no line, but that you can't draw it always and forever without mainly doing bad stuff. Especially in the hands of the foax who now implement it. I don't trust the govt. with the world, why the hell should I trust it with people's bedrooms?

I say, check his pockets for lollipops.

Tracer, check your email, I can't say this comment on the board else I'll get in trubble again :)

if r kelly is not imprisoned then there will be no laws and everybody will be in ANARCHY!

So that said, two points: saying that cases are different doesn't mean that they should be given up on, just that there should be something better as a guideline than a birthday.

Second: in the r kelly case it is outrageous because they can't prove anything. They have apparently been "tracking" the case for years (who else EVER is "tracked" for years over this stuff besides certain celebs? Christ they probably tracked him closer than than some of the alleged terrorists [tho he did keep a higher profile]) and NOBODY HAS EVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT CONSENT. The settlements were simple on statutory charges. In other words, nobody ever said they were coerced into anything.

At very worst, he lied to 14-16 year old girls to get them in the sack. Which makes him different from most 14-16 year old boys how?

People are bad and lie to other people all the time. Is that what the govt. is there for? To make everyone always tell the truth? Gimme a break.

Well, he's 33, for one.... </cheapshot>

This is a purely statutory case & statutory laws are most often used when there is consent on all sides and therefore they are the ONLY laws which can be used. & further as it is straight age-based and no issues of consent are allowed or permissible, any arguments at all beyond "did they?" and "how old?" rilly matter in court.

No, I think he's talking about stuatory rape charges where (in the absence of parents introducing protective moral opprobrium into the situation) someone attempts to demonstrate that "it wasn't so bad" because the victim was "just that sort of girl" -- i.e., "of course it would be terrible if someone laid his hands on a pristine middle- class blonde girl, but this was just some ghetto skank who does this all the time anyway." Given your arguments above, Sterling, I can't tell whether you'd suggest that that argument should be "taken out and shot" or rather celebrated for acknowledging "the messy ugly world of emotions & expectations."

Also your contention that this is "a purely statuatory case" is a little odd insofar as everything I've read about it indicates that there's no statuatory rape charge and only a production-and- dissemination of child porn charge: in the legal sense what you (and R. Kelly) need to be arguing is not that it's okay to have sex with teenagers but that it's okay to document it as entertainment. I.e., not "are teenagers competent to consent to sex" but "are teenagers competent to consent to appearing in pornography," which I think is a slightly harder argument to make.

I mean, for the girl, I maintain that the worst thing to come out of it is that there are videotapes of her having sex floating all over chicago. A bad sexual experience doesn't necessarily ruin somebody's life, but fifteen minutes of shame damn well can.

Okay, you wanna play that snotty game, Humbert Humbert...listen up. You seem very gung ho that there should be no age of consent on the basis that people mature at different ages. Fair enough. So then why have a legal drinking age, legal smoking age, legal voting age, legal age to join the army, legal age to leave school, legal age to get married, legal age to drive...etc etc etc. I'm not saying I disagree that each case is slightly different or that R. Kelly isn't being singled out for being a star - though I WILL point out that I've seen plenty of stories on the news when I lived out west of men getting arrested for statuatory rape so that's not even entirely true - but I am saying your argument is asinine unless you want to abolish all legal age laws. Which if you do, fine, and quite frankly I don't disagree with the idea, but they are there for a reason. And like ALL legal age laws, the police aren't going to catch everyone who breaks them all the time, nor do they make much of an attempt to. But if you MAKE A VIDEO OF YOURSELF DOING IT AND LET IT OUT, of course they're going to make an example of you. That's how life works.

Calm down anyhow. The police aren't coming after YOU, your 13 year old girlfriend is imaginary anyhow.

Because he opened himself up to legal liability - seriously, that's all I reckon he was stupid about (I don't think contextually he needed to worry about traumatising me). It's undeniable that these laws are arbitrary, but I'd argue that they're also v. necessary - at the very least in terms of making "offenders" really think through what they're doing. It's easy enough to fuck up people who are adults by not thinking through consequences of what you're doing, and with kids/adolescents it's doubly easy. Yeah, of course a teenager who sleeps with another teenager is just as likely to be fucked up by the experience, but the difference is that we don't presume the "offender" in that situation necessarily has the capability to reason through their choice of path. Thus we make it one law for adults and one law for kids for the very same reason that we send kids to juvenile detention centers rather than jails and try to keep them off death row.

The question you're asking ("what if she got something out of it, too?") would, in the hands of less intelligent and more prejudiced people (of which there are lots) come down to "was she asking for it?" - which I think we'd all agree is dangerous. Arbitrary age-based laws at least have the advantage of being clear-cut. Presuming you know how old your partner is, you then automatically know whether you will be breaking a law, and you can enter into the situation without any ambiguities of the possible consequences (this is exactly why these laws *aren't* an example of Big Brother legislating emotional trauma - the laws avoid that precisely because they are so arbitrary and impersonal).

Also: there are people seriously arguing that he's being UNFAIRLY persecuted for this because he's famous?

"You must be at least 42 inches tall to ride this ride."

Abuse can and does exist. It is bad and should be punished.

People can be jerks/emotionally manipulative, etc. It is IMPOSSIBLE to regulate that.

Tracer: if you're concerned about yr. hypothetical child then the main thing is to empower them to make good decisions -- which means sex education (which barely exists in the U.S.) that grapples with how people actually live, rather than bible codes. Sex is the only area where certain otherwise rational people will accept laws which are guaranteed to attack people who hurt NOBODY, under the utterly irrational notion that morals can and should be regulated through biblical eye-for-eye vengance including against people who have done nothing wrong from any rational viewpoint.

Liberals tend to be much better on the right to privacy, arguing often that it is preferable to accept certain criminals will not be prosecuted than to violate the bill of rights. But they refuse to accept this logic when applied to privacy of personal and consentual relations.

And feminists with their boneheaded equation of emotional and physical harm have done a great disservice in this regard. Yesyes I know I am making enemies of everyone in ILX. Fuckit.

Sterling did you not just say that you don't trust the state to make decisions at all, much less messy look-at-the- individual decisions like you're suggesting here?

Also, another disturbing thing about this case: threats that the girl will be FORCED to testify even if she doesn't want to, at risk of going to jail. You want a sure way to ruin her life more? throw her in jail until she agrees to testify before the whole frikin nation. Don't you see? She just wants this to go away. Victims rights include not being FORCED to be a victim.

(a) It creates crimes of judgment, essentially: people would go into relationships with minors without a clear sense of whether they were acting criminally or not, their choices possibly subject to highly- stigmatized criminal charges if anyone even tangentially involved disagreed with them. Which leads to

(b) People could easily make bad judgments that they didn't even know were bad judgments, meaning they could potentially victimize others and plead complete ignorance or essentially a variant of criminal insanity in which they were unaware of the illegality of their actions (which were anyway only "subjectively" criminal at the time, until later adjudicated in criminal court). Which leads to

(c) It would create a situation in which any teen-adult relationship that the parents don't like has to be adjudicated, which would be an enormous logistical mess.

I don't think anyone in the legal profession would ever support such an arrangement on the criminal side: in some senses it doesn't even fit into the basic framework of criminal law in this country.

Mainly I'm posting again because I remembered something else about the biblical fucked-upness of current laws -- it is nearly impossible for a prostitute to bring rape charges & of course prostitutes are ESPECIALLY at risk for that. More proof that the current laws are based on notions of "purity" than actual human relations.

I didn't know you knew the girl personally to make a judgement on her maturity - or are you scoping her too? Anyhow, she's 17 now, as someone else noted - not then. Otherwise what the hell would the case be? And I've never been passive-aggressive towards you, I've always been openly and actively aggressive towards you, being as I find you the second most insufferable person I've ever met off of this message board. I believe passive-aggressive could be defined as you and your friend's little jealous email to me over the Chuck Eddy thing, for example.

Here's the point: it'd be far too long and complex for the courts to abolish age laws and then on a case-by-case basis judge what is right and what is wrong. Not only that, but as has been pointed out, you're the one insistant that you don't want the government making decisions like this - so why are you going to lay something as complex as maturity and intelligence in the hands of judges and legislators? That doesn't make much sense at all. And you were a little too busy being bitter towards my knowledge of your invisible girlfriend's age to notice my actual point: would you have ALL age laws abolished and how would we then decide to legislate ALL of these things? Because unless you want them ALL abolished, you seem like a bit of a pervy freak right now.

And hells yeah I'm for at the least drastically reworking legal restrictions on drinking, smoking, and voting in various different ways. I didn't address it because I couldn't seriously believe that anyone on the den of debauchery that is ILX rilly thinks that people shouldn't be able to drink till they're 21 etc.

Fuck, teenagers should be able to move out of their parents house to their own place when they're 16 or so. It would save all parties involved a great deal of frustration.

Also why do people worry so much about 'lost innocence'? Innocence in this world will get you killed. If somebody's tangled or tango'ed with a superstar predator early, they'll be more sussed later. It doesn't necessarily have to mean 'victimisation', except if they take subsequent fallout badly and end up ODing or in the nut hatch or something

is a dilettante attitude. You should meet some of the children I work with in my day job, many of whom have had the questionable good fortune to meet up with people who've given them the dubious opportunity to get "sussed" earlier. They are f***ed up now. Not crazy, mind you. Just angry & bitter & headed nowhere fast, and suffused with a sense of hopelessness. "Innocence" is of course a loaded word. Better to say that childhood shouldn't involve sex with adults, since it effectively ends childhood, and many of the developmental milestones which one encounters during the time of one's childhood are essential to later growth & happiness.

NOT GUILTY

R you fucking kidding me

Nope, just now on AP

O_O

unbelievable

anyway good piece on dero pleading the 5th / issues of child porn here:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/hottype/080612/

is he gonna celebrate this occasion with a statutory rape or two?

at the River North McDonald's.

My minds telling me nooooooo!

thank God we live in a country where a man can pee on a young girl and not have to go to jail for it

totally got this in my head now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_DTexNGn-U

http://koreantomcruise.muxtape.com/

You realize his next album is going to be titled "I Had Sex with an Underage Girl"

holy shit, i can't believe he got off (pun not intended)

Beatrix Kiddo, though I may appreciate it that was a FAIL.
R Kelly wouldn't be as blatant as to title his album with something that would directly implicate him, it'd be something innocuous like 'Them Girls' and he'd sing some shit like (off the top of my head);
'I love them girls with the long hair, short hair, black hair, no hair down there, I love them girls with the big eyes, big thighs, come up to my thighs, I love them girls with the smooth skin, body a 10 just turned eleven, oooh..." and T. Pain would be on that joint and no one would be the wiser.
I better get royalties if this happens.

how the fuck?

Not my finest hour.

WOW amazing....don't care if it's offensive but I'm happy, more music from kells

Fantastic.

(the song parody, not the trial or chinch's comment!)

count me in, very happy about the verdict here.

Yup.

still cant believe this shit feelin like dan p up in this

still cant believe this shit feelin like dan p up in this

-- The Reverend, Saturday, June 14, 2008 6:35 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

lol lol lol

p

seriously, what the fuck

BIRDS MUST NOT BE KEPT IN CAGES

PISS MUST NOT BE KEPT OFF CHILDREN

WOW amazing....don't care if it's offensive but I'm happy, more music from kells

-- chinchillas they can fit on gorillas, Friday, 13 June 2008 20:35 (Yesterday) Link

I'd probably be leaning toward this reaction a lot more if his current single wasn't as awful as "Hairbraider."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgs5_YSVjtE

http://i30.tinypic.com/2sbskf8.jpg

^Best part.

feelin like dan p = in a mood of r kelly hatred

this is pretty fucked up

from an email I received earlier:
"It is my sincere hope that Tim Russert passed from this earth without
the knowledge that R.Kelly had been set free to inflict further pain on
families across this country."

further piss

^^ needs samples of R. Kelly saying "real talk" after every line

please somebody do this..... it would make my lifetime

The Eleventh Amendment goes as follows:
Celebrities are always innocent and no celebrity shall ever go to jail.

ffs

I'd though you said you'll leave ILX, Marcello.

I'll retract that one.

It's difficult to touch anybody when you spend the whole of your life locked in one room.

[ADMIN: post deleted - over the line]

Good thing you deleted that post, I hope Marcello realizes this sort of bullshit isn't tolerated on ILX anymore.

aw what did i miss :[

"that dude"

Taking up Flex's point about copping some responsibility, why do you think others (industry, DJs, Jay-Z) were comfortable for so long with him when it wasn't a well-kept secret in the first place? Was it just C.R.E.A.M (and the fact he's not on top anymore)? Was there a sense that his private life was private, or just that he wasn't going much further than the regular sex-with-groupies? How does this case work alongside hip hop masculinity / sexuality? Oh no! I just asked for some undergrad Cult. Studies essay...

Taking up Flex's point about copping some responsibility, why do you think others (industry, DJs, Jay-Z) were comfortable for so long with him when it wasn't a well-kept secret in the first place? Was it just C.R.E.A.M (and the fact he's not on top anymore)? Was there a sense that his private life was private, or just that he wasn't going much further than the regular sex-with-groupies? How does this case work alongside hip hop masculinity / sexuality? Oh no! I just asked for some undergrad Cult. Studies essay...

― paulhw, Thursday, September 25, 2008 4:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

Also keep in mind that industry types, especially rap industry types, are shady characters. This child porn charge is a stand-out, to be sure, but shootouts among entourages, gun charges, anddrugs all around the industry don't really make for a soapbox that anyone can preach to R Kelly from. Dangling modifier. I'll be tmost of his buddies just thought she was another groupie - a little young, sure, they don't really go for them like that - but a groupie nonetheless. I'll bet a lot of them even didn't know he liked that. Plus I'll bet people like label dealers and his agent are pretty much just all about the money like you said. And he's still making hits, so, shit, everyone wins, except the girl that got peed on.

what experience do you have with "rap industry types" exactly...?

maybe he's a rapper :)

everyone wins, except the girl that got peed on.

Probably already been posted but what the hey:

When you say teenage, how old we talkin'?

thanx i wanted to post that with the flex one but couldn't find it

Wtf @ this thread

very happy about the verdict here

Don't forget about can't pee on u

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jimderogatis/parents-told-police-r-kelly-is-keeping-women-in-a-cult

http://www.avclub.com/article/one-r-kellys-alleged-victims-says-he-paid-her-not--259765

This remains horrendous.

Wtf @ this thread

― My Chief Keef Keef (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, December 20, 2013 10:40 AM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dunno about right or wrong but Ilx used to be at least interesting. Now its the same vaginal-male perspective you get literally everywhere else

whut

listen I'm just a regular guy, I put my vagina on one leg at a time like everybody else

also lol @ my shaggs/keef dn not my best work

"Internet liberal" might be a better/less self-consciously aggressive term but it does feel a lot more unified politically than it used to. A lot of positions on issues, it's just taken for granted we all agree, there's less discussion. Not sure I mind really, "discussions" used to get p fractious and unpleasant.

i dunno about right or wrong but Ilx used to be at least interesting. Now its the same vaginal-male perspective you get literally everywhere else

― sleepingbag, Wednesday, 23 August 2017 02:29 (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ah, for the good old days when people were straight-up underage rape apologists.

https://news.avclub.com/lifetime-is-taking-on-r-kelly-with-a-docuseries-and-mo-1825860397

lol Lifetime, so brave, surely they are doing this in order to damage his career rather than profit off of it

Embattled R&B star R Kelly has been filmed telling a room full of people it is "too late" for his musical influence to be curtailed.

The video was originally uploaded to Facebook on 17 May, as the singer faced fresh allegations of sexual misconduct.

"I'm handcuffed by my destiny," he says, clutching a cigar. "They should've did this [expletive] 30 years ago.

"It's too late. The music has been injected into the world."

well he's right about that

otoh, legacies can be erased

i don't think R Kelly is going to get many new fans down the road, that's one way to do it.

on the other hand, it's crazy what fans will say to defend him, how they'll still believe he's being railroaded or even did nothing wrong.

BREAKING: Embattled R&B superstar R. Kelly was charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in Cook County Friday morning, records show. https://t.co/H7k2Ind5F7

— Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) February 22, 2019

That only took ... years and years of inaction and unrepentant repugnant behavior.

don't forget the michael jackson-style messianic self-aggrandizing songs!

What in the everloving fuck @ this thread.

lol Lifetime, so brave, surely they are doing this in order to damage his career rather than profit off of it

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, May 8, 2018 11:11 AM (nine months ago)

Damn, Shakey, this was cynical!

that's a weird comment

why not both?

Beyond why not both, they also undoubtedly had to factor in the risk of a defamation claim

HBO actually is being sued by the Jackson Estate for airing the "Leaving Neverland" doc (though that's a wild-seeming contractual claim based on a 1992 agreement for airing a concert, in which HBO apparently agreed "not make any disparaging remarks" about Jackson)

this thread title is very internet-2002 in a bad way

Now I want to know what Marcello could have said that was serious enough to get deleted in 2008

don’t try it.

sounds like he is in custody

which record is that on?

Step in the Name of the Law

wau at s clover

cant believe the time before now wasnt now

being loud and mad and red online about how 27-year-olds should be allowed to fuck 14-year-olds without censure probably has as many adherents now as it did then

aaliyah said it best. age ain't... i.e. maturity doesn't come at the stroke of midnight but differently for different people. besides, two teen can consentually screw but not an adult and a teen, which makes no sense.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, June 5, 2002 5:00 PM (sixteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And feminists with their boneheaded equation of emotional and physical harm have done a great disservice in this regard. Yesyes I know I am making enemies of everyone in ILX. Fuckit.

― Sterling Clover, Wednesday, June 5, 2002 5:00 PM (sixteen years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but we have to remember that things were a lot different in the 2000s

This thread isn’t regular old-ilx bad, it’s some of these people must be on a register by now bad

More props for the Lifetime doc:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/r-kelly-survivor-lisa-vanallen-writes-ny-times-op-ed-1190441

https://variety.com/2019/music/news/john-legend-r-kelly-long-time-coming-1203150150/

(Someone should maybe change this thread title, btw?)

(...thanks, mod!)

_
but we have to remember that things were a lot different in the 2000s

i believe omar little was being facetious

i remember in 2002 thinking that a 24 year post-grad student going out with a 17 year school girl was weird lol

If I were actually to consider accusing a network of looking to “profit” from these developments, it would be CBS for airing this week’s big two-part interview with R. Kelly. I guess he certainly has the right to defend himself on TV if he wants. But it feels like the exclusive, heavily promoted interview may serve to legitimize his position in some way? Idk

dude took all the wrong lessons from the Kavanaugh hearing

But it feels like the exclusive, heavily promoted interview may serve to legitimize his position in some way?

Have you seen it? He pretty much set himself on fire.

I’ve read excerpts.

Back in jail for unpaid child support.

"also i said the same sorta stuff about king and boys, so yes it was to be expected."

who is King? wait was this S clover actually advocating for pederasty?

man the 2000's were crazy weird times.

i kind of get the rhetorical move he's trying to make t/o this thread... but suggesting that a 12(!!!!!!!!) yr old girl can grant "consent" to have intercourse with an adult male--as he indeed does above-- is an incredible thing to write.

i believe he's gone from ILX so we can rake him over the coals safely I suppose.

he posted on here a bit kinda recently.

it's more difficult to post with one hand holding an "R KELLY DID NOTHING WRONG" protest sign while standing outside a courthouse but he managed

i'm not sure he was trying to apologize for r. kelly much as he was trying to introduce some nuance (usually a good gesture) into a situation that doesn't really call for nuance.

i mean i can imagine a reasonable person writing something like "well, that 17 y.o. was very emotionally mature for her age" but trying to make that move w/ a 12 y.o.? holy shit.

DeRo totally righteous on NPR's 1A right now.

R. Kelly's lawyer from his 2008 trial is dying of cancer and wants everyone to know Kelly was 'guilty as hell' https://t.co/DKYioShMbx

— INSIDER (@thisisinsider) March 8, 2019

ok, but wtf? -- Genson also told the paper he doesn't think Kelly is guilty of the current charges against him: "I don't think he's done anything inappropriate for years."

wow a lot to unpack in that article

One of the men in the jury pool...who said he liked to crochet and had planned a trip to Germany to visit his boyfriend, said he wasn't too familiar with R. Kelly and thought the trial was about Robert Crumb, the 77-year-old cartoonist who signs his work as "R. Crumb."

https://www.insider.com/r-kelly-trial-lawyers-want-charges-dropped-jury-selection-begins-2021-8

they both like feelin’ on your booty