The family of a 20-year old woman who is living in one of R. Kelly’s homes has said that the notorious singer employs a "calculating, methodical process to groom naive girls."
The unnamed family member told TMZ that the woman, who was 20 when she moved in with Kelly last year, met the star during an after-concert meet and greet.
Kelly has denied accusations that he is maintaining a ‘cult’ of up to six young sex slaves leveled against him in a Buzzfeed article by reporter Jim DeRogatis who initially exposed Kelly’s sexual predation on young women in a series of articles in 2000.
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The family member of the unnamed girl confirmed to TMZ that Kelly took the girl’s phone, which Derogatis alleged was standard behavior by Kelly as regards the women he has living at his properties.
However, the family member appeared to contradict the central claim of the father of Joycelyn Savage, a 22-year old aspiring singer who has been living at one of Kelly’s properties, that the women are being ‘held against their will.’
Savage’s family gave a dramatic press conference earlier this week at which they accused Kelly of making their daughter a sex slave and said she was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
But Savage gave a video interview to TMZ in which she rebutted her family’s claims, saying: “I’m in a happy place with my life and I am not being brainwashed or anything like that… I just want everyone to know I am totally fine, I’ve never felt like a hostage or anything of that nature.”
The latest family member to speak out said that the unnamed woman is free to leave Kelly's properties in Illinois and Georgia, “and has done so on multiple occasions.”
The website reports that the 20 year-old has “flown out-of-state, unaccompanied to visit family” on more than one occasion.
The family member says that rather than using coercion to control the young women, Kelly flies the women to Beverly Hills for shopping sprees, and buys high-priced handbags, lingerie, shoes and spa trips for all of the girlfriends.
TMZ reports that Kelly says he "wants to shower them in luxury."
Over the years Kelly has had multiple accusations of sexual misconduct leveled against him, including a 2008 case where he was acquitted on 14 charges of making child pornography; that case centered around a videotape that prosecutors alleged showed Kelly urinating on a teenage girl.
It was DeRogatis, who, having received the tape from an anonymous source in 2000, turned it over to police.
TMZ’s sources, say the unidentified 20-year-old met Kelly backstage and communicated with the singer for about six months before he asked her to live with him.
She describes Kelly as "her man," the website says, adding that while the family don’t perceive any criminal wrongdoing by Kelly, they fear he uses 'psychological abuse' to make the young women dependent on him.
