Surviving R. Kelly Recap: The Year Everything Changed – The New York Times

Ms. Gardner and Ms. Kramer describe him as not only enormously controlling but also physically abusive. Ms. Kramer said that Mr. Kelly would beat Ms. Gardner with extension cords, belts, shoes and whatever you could think of. Once when Ms. Gardner didnt come over to Mr. Kelly when he beckoned at a party, he pulled her hair out, she said. Mr. Kelly left her on a tour bus for three days without food or water an assistant sneaked her some, her mother said. Ms. Gardner said the longest she was ever locked away by herself was for a week and a half.

It felt lonely, sad," she said. It was like I didnt want to live anymore. It was just dark.

Jerhonda Pace, who met Mr. Kelly at age 15 when she came to support him at his 2008 trial and eventually entered a relationship with him that lasted several months, said that he had asked her to enter a suicide pact. She said she was so emotionally beholden to him at the time that she agreed.

If he was to go to jail or someone was to harm him, I was supposed to kill myself, she said, through tears. He told me that if I was everything to him, like I say he is, there would be no life worth living.

The final chapter of The Reckoning focused on the two young women, Joycelyn Savage and Azriel Clary, who remained with Mr. Kelly while the documentary was made.

They missed family events, like a high school graduation and a grandfathers funeral. Their parents and siblings hadnt seen them in years and couldnt communicate with them. In long interviews, their parents describe their efforts to bring their children home and the toll it has taken.

Ms. Clarys mother and her brother, Armani, attended an R. Kelly concert in Tampa, Fla., hoping to see Ms. Clary. And she was there, onstage. Her mother rushed onto the stage to her daughter, before being pulled away by security in a headlock and passed to the police. Armani was also taken away in a police car.

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Surviving R. Kelly Recap: The Year Everything Changed - The New York Times