Lifetime digs into R. Kelly’s sexual predatory behavior in six-part documentary ‘Surviving R. Kelly’

Beginning Thursday, January 3, Lifetime will air a three-day, six-hour documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” which covers all this emotionally wrenching territory and more. It features several women who were involved with him, some going back to the 1990s, one as recently as 2017.

Family members, music industry insiders, activists, academics, medical professionals, former employees, journalists and celebrities such as Wendy Williams and John Legend weigh in as well.

Three Atlanta women are featured prominently.

- Lisa Van Allen was one of R. Kelly's sexual exploits when she was a 17 year old in the 1990s and was forced to have threesomes with a girl she later found out was just 14.

- Asante McGee, a self-described "super fan" of the singer, met him in her mid-30s in 2014 and dated him for two years before she spent a brief time in his Johns Creek home where she said she was sexually and psychologically abused.

- Atlanta resident Oronike Odeleye helped launch the #MuteRKelly campaign, pressuring concert promoters to cancel his concerts, holding protests outside of concerts and encouraging radio stations and streaming services to stop playing his music. Several celebrities such as Viola Davis and Shonda Rhimes jumped on board and both the Time's Up and #MeToo movements helped amplify the message.

So far, Odeleye has had tangible success cutting off Kelly's primary source of income: touring. Several major concerts were nixed in cities such as his hometown of Chicago and New York. He was evicted from his two metro Atlanta homes in February, 2018 for non payment.

Kelly has only one announced tour date scheduled in 2019 and it's in Germany in April, according to Songkick.

Spotify, Pandora and Apple Music stopped playing R. Kelly music on their curated playlists earlier this year. Syndicated host Tom Joyner also removed R. Kelly music from his show, heard in Atlanta on Classix 102.9.

Locally, according to Mediabase 24/7, Kiss 104.1 has not spun an R. Kelly record since October. Until mid-December, Majic 107.5/97.5 still had two of his songs in regular rotation. V-103 has played several of his songs the past month.

He is also not actively recording music for RCA Records. His last official regular album release was in 2015 called "The Buffet." He hasn't had a single hit the Billboard R&B charts since 2013. He did come out on SoundCloud recently with a 19-minute song called "I Admit" in which he didn't admit to creating a sex cult or being a pedophile.

Kelly in the past has denied all allegations and didn’t respond to the documentarians when they reached out to him with questions.

The first episode focuses on R. Kelly’s rough upbringing as a child. He said in past interviews that he was sexually abused by family members. He also showed early signs of musical prowess, using that as an outlet for his pain. He blossomed as a musical prodigy.

But at the same time, as he spent a lot of time at his former high school well into his 20s. He'd hang out with 13, 14 year old girls. Then he discovered Aaliyah, produced her first album, then had sex with her when she was just 15. In 1994, he secretly married her when he was 27. Her family soon had the marriage annulled. "He destroyed a lot of people," said his back-up singer Jovante Cunningham in the episode.

Yet R. Kelly weathered that scandal in a way that would probably not happen today.

“Robert feels like he’s invincible,” Cunningham added.  “In hindsight, in society, we kind of made him feel that way.”

Starting with episode two, the stories of physical and mental abuse from survivors begin to pile up. He humiliated the women, controlled them. He forbade them from talking to anybody else. They needed permission to eat or go to the bathroom. They were required to call him “Daddy.” He videotaped many of his sexcapades.

"He stole my life from me," said Lizzette Martinez in the second episode, "being abused like this."

Van Allen’s story appears toward the end of episode two, into episode three. She was one of the first women to come out publicly against Kelly during his 2008 trial in which he was accused of sleeping with a 14 year old. But at the time, she felt totally alone.

With this documentary, "I'm hoping that people are more open to change," Van Allen said in an interview three days before the documentary's debut. "Back then, it was pretty much just me. It was my word against his. Now there are all these other girls coming out. Like with Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein, there's power in numbers."

Van Allen, now 38 and engaged to be married, said she wants Kelly to be held accountable for his actions and is happy to see the progress made by the @MuteRKelly campaign.

She would love to see him prosecuted but for now, she said she believes he is no longer living as lavish a lifestyle as he used to. “He’s feeling the wrath,” she said. “That’s a start.”

Van Allen said Kelly fans attack her regularly on social media. She just wants them to look at the facts and remove emotion from the equation.

“Talking about this is like therapy,” she said. “The more I talk, the better I feel. I want to help others. And by getting it out, it helps me to move on.”

McGee, the other Atlanta woman who had a relationship with Kelly, was not a teenager when she met him in 2013. She was in her mid-30s, a full-grown woman who had loved his music since she was 14. She traveled to multiple cities to see his concerts and when she moved to Atlanta in 2006 would attend club appearances he’d make at places such as the Velvet Room and Club Karma.

She eventually caught Kelly’s attention and had sex with him for the first time in Baton Rouge and enjoyed it. “Is this a dream?” she thought. For two years, she dated him, knowing full well it was not at all exclusive. She said she enjoyed her  time with him, that he was mostly kind to her, wining and dining her. (She said he did one time leave her in a van for eight hours after they had an argument.)

But McGee - who was a remote customer service agent at the time - said she only became perturbed when he moved her into his Johns Creek mansion in May of 2016. He quickly imposed rules. Most notably, she could not enter a room without knocking or stomping. “I had to get his permission to eat, to leave my bedroom,” she said. He would get angry if he didn’t like what she wore. She was not allowed to talk to the other women outside his purview.

And he would summon her on occasion to what he called “the Black Room” where she would have to submit to whatever sexual proclivities he desired. “That’s the dark side of him,” she said. “That’s why he called it the Black Room.”

She said she really was in the house for only about a week in total before she left in disgust, noticing how young most of the other women were. One woman, who she called “the trainer,” would inform her of the rules and had been with him since she was 14 or 15, McGee said.

After he departure, he tried to get back in her good graces but she said she refused. McGee then spoke with Jim DeRogatis for Buzzfeed last year about her experience. After that story came out, she never heard from him again.

“My hope is this documentary will help people understand and recognize Robert for who he is,” McGee said, “and separate R. Kelly from Robert. He has a sickness and he needs help.” She said she has not been deterred by what she calls the “victim shaming” from his fans who “choose to see what Rob wants them to see.”

McGee said her time with Kelly has damaged her ability to date. “Men say things and I get immediately suspicious,” she said, even if what they say is totally innocent. And she blames that on Kelly’s ability to charm in a way that makes her question her own judgment.

During a recent screening in New York City of the documentary, a bomb scare was called in 20 minutes into the film and the organizers were forced to evacuate. Though who actually made the call was not clear, Van Allen figures it was someone from Kelly's camp trying to cause mayhem.

“If it was him, he just brought more attention to the documentary,” Van Allen said. And Kelly has not been able to stop Lifetime from airing it.

“The truth is the truth,” Van Allen said.

TV PREVIEW

“Surviving R. Kelly,” 9 p.m. Thursday (January 3), Friday (January 4) and Saturday (January 5) spanning to hours each night, Lifetime