The Daily - Prosecuting R. Kelly

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

This year, Chicago’s top prosecutor, Kim Foxx, took the unusual step of asking women to come forward with allegations against the musician R. Kelly. In an interview, she explained that decision. Guest: John Eligon, a national correspondent for The New York Times, spoke with Ms. Foxx. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Earlier this year, Chicago's top prosecutor, Kim Fox, took the unusual step of asking women to come forward with allegations against the musician R. Kelly. Today, she explains that decision. It's Thursday, March 28th. Hello?

Yes, we're here. Okay. Okay, good. So, John, why did you call this prosecutor, Kim Fox? So R. Kelly is one of these entertainers who has had these allegations of sexual misconduct swirling around him for a long time. But he's always seemed to be able to elude

the most serious consequences. John Eligo is a national correspondent for The Times. But we're in a moment where the tide seems to be turning against him. And I wanted to talk to the person who has the most power to do something about it. Tell me a little about growing up and then kind of just what life was like

for you growing up in the city. Yeah, sure. So I was born and raised here in the city. I found out that in a way, Kim Fox is actually of a background and of a pedigree that would make her the perfect person that you would expect to look into this R. Kelly situation. Hmm. What do you mean? Who is she?

So she's a born and bred Chicagoan, just like R. Kelly. She's Black. She grew up on the North Side with her mother. We lived in Cabrini through the 70s until the early 80s. They lived in the notorious Cabrini Green housing project. And then moved about a mile north to a more affluent neighborhood They lived in the notorious Cabrini Green housing project. She bounced around different houses. It was just her and her mom. Her mother worked the entire time, but it was certainly not enough for us to live there.

Her mom worked a lot. She waited tables. She bartended. She was always working two jobs at a time. And so other family members would take care of her. And it was the older folks had to watch the younger ones. So I had a cousin who was responsible for watching me sometimes at his house, sometimes at my...

She explained to me that when she was a child, she actually had a cousin who she spent a lot of time with. And he would touch me. And it actually turned out that that cousin would sexually assault her. And this was for a couple of years. And it actually turned out that that cousin would sexually assault her. And the cousin essentially told her,

Don't tell anyone. This is just between you and I. If you tell someone, you're going to be in trouble. If you tell Granny, my grandmother, who was the most important person in my life at that time, Granny would be disappointed. Or that he would hurt Granny. Like, if you tell this, you know, I'm going to hurt her. And then, just a year later, when she was in second grade,

she was assaulted again. On my way home from school, there was a house on the corner, an old Victorian. And as I was turning in front of this old house, two older boys grabbed me and said, Hey, come with us. We want to show you something. And me saying, listen, I got to get home. I'm in second grade at this point. to get home. I'm in second grade at this point. I think these boys maybe are eighth graders,

maybe a little older. I can't, everyone seems old. And they said, no, you're going with us. And took me into this house upstairs in the window facing where I could still see the school. She recalled looking out the window, and essentially the boys were taking turns assaulting her. And around the same time she's dealing with the traumas, she has another defining moment in her life. I think I was between five and six. My mother took me to court for the first time. As a child, she actually went to court with her mother once,

who was seeking child support payments from her father. My mother was upset. I couldn't comprehend what was so upsetting to her. And when we get to the courtroom, I think she was feeling my apprehension and was trying to explain to me who our lawyer was, what a lawyer was. And it was very simple. It was, they're here to help us. And I was impressed because they were wearing suits.

They were using language that seemed really fancy and at the same time were talking to my mom and I like we were the most important people in the room. And I said, wow, I want to do that. I want to I want to do that. And my mother said, then you will be a lawyer. So so it shall be. And she does it. She does well in school, goes to college and then law school. And what kind of legal work does she do? Initially, she does insurance defense work, and as you might expect...

I absolutely hated it. She found that pretty boring and pretty dry. And so I was looking to get out. I was looking for another job. So she found out that there was an opening at the Cook County Public Guardian office. I wasn't quite sure what the Cook County Public Guardian's office did. What I did know is that they were hiring. Lo and behold, what she actually does there, she works with young children, children who may have experienced some of the same things that she experienced,

whether it be sexual assaults or other trauma growing up. some of the same things that she experienced, whether it be sexual assaults or other trauma growing up. We were lawyers on behalf of children who were in the foster care system. I had clients who were sexually and physically abused. I had clients whose parents could not care for them because they were dealing with addiction or mental health issues.

And this really helps her to see how the system maybe doesn't treat these young victims the way it should. Maybe it dismisses them. These were throwaway kids. These were kids who I had heard over and over again were broken, were damaged. So she says, you know, hey, this is what I want to do. run over again. We're broken. We're damaged. So she says, you know, hey, this is what I want to do. I want to bring the trauma that I have felt in my life and use that to help children who might have lived a similar life to me or might be living a similar life to what I lived. And how does she use her experience to help these children? She becomes a sex crimes prosecutor. So now she is essentially going after some of the people

accused of sexually assaulting women and boys and men. And she's actually working with some of these victims, people whose experiences, whose stories looked a lot like hers. And then in the early 2000s, a case comes into the very same office where Kim Foxx is working. And it kind of rocks Chicago because it charges one of Chicago's most beloved black celebrities. rocks Chicago because it charges one of Chicago's most beloved Black celebrities. Sex lies in videotape. R&B superstar R. Kelly videotaping himself having sex with an underage girl. A sex tape emerges. There's a tape of him urinating and having sex with a young girl.

Everyone sees it. It's a graphic and gruesome tape, and apparently it ends with him urinating on the girl after having sex. He's one of our greatest artists of our time, I think. And definitely somebody who we looked up to when we was in high school. So I just hope it's not true. R. Kelly is ultimately charged with child

pornography, and Kim Fox, she's actually in the sex crimes division while her office is bringing charges against R. Kelly. It was a sex crimes unit with a specialty of those positions of trust and authority for engaging in sexual misconduct with children. So she now has a firsthand view of this prosecution as it's going on.

She wasn't directly involved in the case, but hey, she was in the office when prosecutors were talking about it. But outside the office, Chicagoans... I love Mark Kelly and I know he didn't do it. I know that's not him. Particularly Black Chicagoans were not necessarily convinced that R. Kelly had done this. Many of them were coming to his defense. He's not guilty at all. They just want to bring him down and kill his image of who he is. I need to protect him because he's a good man. He's not who people make him seem like he's a monster. He's not guilty. Why him seem like he's a monster.

Why was there this pushback to the allegations? Because back in the early 2000s, you have to remember R. Kelly was Chicago. I mean, he was everywhere. He's back again tonight to perform the track number one hit. Please welcome R. Kelly. You know, he was on the radio. Moving up two notches, here's R. Kelly with his number one on the R&B chart, Bump and Grind. He was, you know, in the clubs. I was too young to go to the clubs at the time, but, you know, he was there nonetheless. It's the Pied Piper of R&B, y'all. Follow me. Chicago and them.

It's a two-step in town. That's the culture of the two-step dance. You know, step in the name of love. Is that one of his songs? Yeah. Step in the name of love The music was the music. And you would go to a barbecue and somebody's stepping in the name of love

or at a wedding or go to any graduation, post that song, and people were believing they could fly. It was part of the fabric. So there's Kim who's at a family barbecue having this conversation, and there's Kim who's in the office knowing that this is an actual person. So Kim Fox is hearing two different conversations, one inside the office and one outside in the community. And at the barbecue, it was, you know, here's this guy at the height of his career and here are these allegations, right? Like, why are they taking down this Black man?

And it was in some of my circles that this wasn't about sex abuse, sex assault, or pornography. This was an attempt to take a hometown hero and tarnish his image. And so she had to kind of live with these two worlds. The reality that at work, she sees this tape and she understands the legal case against him.

And at home, she's surrounded by people who think that he may be unfairly persecuted here, love his music, and think of him as a local hero. Exactly. It's the difference between, you know, her job and her profession and looking at it through legal eyes versus looking at it through the emotional eyes that a community had for someone who produced great music. And so what happens with the case? The prosecution essentially tried to prove that the

young girl in the video was actually a minor, that she was underage and that R. Kelly was having sex with her. But it turns out that that girl, she would not cooperate with the prosecution. She did not testify. And at the end of the day, the jury says, hey, we can't know for certain who was in that video, whether it was a minor that R. Kelly was having sex with. And so R. Kelly's acquitted. And what happens after the trial, after R. Kelly is acquitted? It certainly does not derail his career. In fact, he goes on, he continues to make music.

You know, he has big duets, you know, with Lady Gaga. He releases a song with Jay-Z. Makes television appearances. I just believe she can fly, and I, for one, am inclined to take his word for it. Please welcome R. Kelly. In some ways, the accusations become just a big joke. I'm gonna be on you. Drip, drip, drip, drip.

Dave Chappelle did a skit about him. You believe he urinated on a 15-year-old girl. Whoa, hold on, lady. I didn't say all that. You know with these tapes, they can do a lot of things. For all I know, that piss was digital. They get crazy with special effects. But then in 2017, a damning story comes out in BuzzFeed.

We were horrified at a BuzzFeed report detailing allegations that R. Kelly was holding women against their will in what parents of one of the women described as a cult. It basically accuses R. Kelly of running a sexual cabal. And this is happening right before the Me Too movement starts to take shape. It's about damn time. We needed to stop rewarding bad behavior a long time ago.

And when it takes off, people really seize on the story. And so you have hashtags saying to mute R. Kelly. Hashtags talking about Time's Up. Black girls matter! And so now you finally have this kind of tide

that seems to be turning against R. Kelly in a way that this public opinion, maybe always festering a little bit beneath the surface, really starts to rise. And then... There's a difference between R. Kelly and Robert. You see this documentary drop called Surviving R. Kelly. R. Kelly's this fun, laughing, loving guy.

But Robert... is the devil. And tell me about this documentary. So essentially, it was a TV documentary in six parts that aired on Lifetime. And it essentially laid out allegation after allegation against R. Kelly, told by several women who say that they were victimized by him. And I went to the National Domestic Violence Awareness Hotline. And there are 17 questions. There was only two things on that list

that Robert hadn't done to me. And that's when it became real to me, like, you're being abused. You had these women who were describing all these different ways in which he not only assaulted them, but he also controlled their lives, is how a lot of these women described it. I can control what you do, who you do it with, how long you do it, where you're going, what you wear, when you eat, when you sleep. And how he would basically use fear and intimidation to control them. My parents were trying to get a hold of me and they couldn't. I did not know that my cell phone number was being changed.

Controlling, you know, their access to using their cell phones. They said that he made them call him daddy. It was instructed to call him daddy during sex, but it went from that to pretty much all the time, he'd be daddy. And I heard a lot about Rob going to Kenwood High School to hang out, and I always wondered, what the heck is he doing hanging around the high school? And one thing that was so remarkable about it,

it was not just the woman speaking, but it was also, you know, handlers, bodyguards, and a lot of other people who were part of his life at the time, who were laying out some of these very damning allegations. Now, it's important to say that R. Kelly has vehemently denied doing any of that to these women. His lawyers come out forcefully denying the allegations and saying basically that all the women are not telling the truth. And what's the reaction to the documentary?

Singer R. Kelly might finally have to face the music. Yes, give it up, guys. The reaction was massive. The fallout for singer R. Kelly appears to be expanding. His record label, RCA, owned by Sony, has dropped him. Lady Gaga is apologizing to fans for her duet with R. Kelly. You had people talking about it all over social media. R. Kelly is not us. So on behalf of Black men, hashtag new R. Kelly. You had all sorts of news outlets

writing about it. I know you wrote this op-ed for CNN.com titled The Message of Surviving R. Kelly. First and foremost, what is the message? It was really a part of the daily discussion, really, especially among Black communities. A lot of people watching the doc were really wondering where the coverage was when it was happening. You had a lot of people saying, you know, why didn't we really see this before in a way? You know, obviously there had always been these allegations against him, but somehow they were just kind of dismissed. Because we didn't do nothing about it the last time. We didn't react about it the last time. We didn't say anything. We didn't defend. We didn't protect. We didn't praise. We

didn't promote. Everything was, well, you know, stepping in the name of love is good. There was even some Black women I talked to in Chicago who said that, you know, whether you're a Black person who falls on the side of saying, hey, I'm still going to listen to his music, or you're someone who's not, they were all united in saying that they felt that they failed their girls. Meanwhile, Kim Fox, she's actually now become the state's attorney, meaning the top prosecutor in Chicago. And after this documentary drops, people are calling her office. They're asking, what are you going to do about this? What are you going to do? How do you see this and not do anything? Right? Like, you watch this documentary, like now do something. People assume that you can watch something on television and then the criminal

justice system will then act. And she wanted to explain to people that that's not exactly how it works. I think part of this was explaining that in order for the criminal justice system to be involved, it requires victims and witnesses. I just can't watch something and say, I now believe And so she decides to do this really unusual thing. Thank you all for gathering. She holds a press conference. The recent allegations against entertainer R. Kelly and the recent Lifetime documentary series are deeply, deeply disturbing. I'm here today to encourage victims of sexual assault or domestic violence related to these allegations to please get in touch with our office. Asking for any woman or anyone else who may have information on the sexual assault allegations against R. Kelly

to basically come forward and tell their stories. Please come forward. There is nothing that can be done to investigate these allegations without the cooperation of both victims and witnesses. We cannot seek justice without you. So essentially you had a prosecutor asking the public to come forward if they had accusations of sexual assault against a man who was not under indictment or under any charges in her office at the time. I shouldn't stress that it takes the courage to relive and repeatedly re-experience trauma by telling your story of sexual victimization. But we rely heavily on victim accounts and witness statements to prosecute cases involving sexual assault and domestic violence. And why is that unusual? Well, first off, prosecutors generally respond to specific complaints that they get.

So some of our critics see it as sort of a fishing expedition. You know, like R. Kelly's lawyer said, it basically opens the door for people to come forward with false allegations. So it's rare in that it's such a proactive tactic by a prosecutor to issue a broad, open call for anyone who has been abused or knows something about alleged abuse by R. Kelly to come forward to her so that she could make a case. Exactly.

And given that, why do you think that she did this, issued this very public call for victims to come forward? I think what she'd say is that she really wanted to make her office more accessible because she understands how difficult it is to get sexual assault victims to come forward, let alone to testify. And as someone who didn't say something,

it is the underreported cases that often keep me up at night. It is the belief that the system is not set up to welcome those who have been harmed because they are not perfect, because they have found perfect, because they found themselves in a circumstance where they believe that they are somehow at fault. That doesn't mean that I believe the allegations to be true.

They're allegations, nonetheless, that are horrifying if true. And that's our job. Our obligation is to make sure that the justice system is available to everyone who may have believed that they cannot speak their truth. So, John, you spoke with her after this press conference. What was the result of the press conference? So after the press conference, several families called into Kim Fox's office with allegations or concerns about their loved ones. Some of them say that their loved ones may have been under R. Kelly's control. And then another sex tape emerges. It again allegedly shows R. Kelly having sex with an underage girl.

And not long after that, Good afternoon. Kim Fox steps to the mic again, has another press conference. Earlier today, Robert Kelly was indicted before Cook County. And this time she announces that Kelly was being charged with 10 counts of sexual abuse. Aggravated criminal sexual abuse is a class two felony with a sentencing range of three to seven years for count. Now, in this case, there are four women who are said to be the victims in that case. Three of those women said they were under 17 when it happened. The offenses happened between 1998 and 2010.

Will appear in bond court tomorrow afternoon. Thank you. Well, what specific difference do you think it makes that Kim Fox had this personal history? How do you think it actually played out in the way that these women came forward? These are complicated cases. It's not necessarily just black or white. There's relationships that start off as consensual and then they may change. So this tricky dynamic here when you're prosecuting sex crimes where the facts are not always clear, where the victim may not always have the most perfect history. But I think someone like Kim Foxx, who's kind of made that empathy that she's had from having

experienced this stuff herself, has made that kind of one of the things that she is known for and one of the things that she really puts out there. I think that that's going to naturally make people more comfortable that they're going to be heard if they talk to her. So it makes sense that women would respond specifically to Kim Fox and decide to come forward given who she is. But I wonder if, on the flip side, that a prosecutor with a personal history of abuse who might be seen as having some kind of agenda will end up making the case more legally vulnerable and open to charges, which I think have already materialized from R. Kelly's defenders, that this is some kind of a crusade. I asked her about that, and she pushed back and said, So the cumulative effects of my life as a woman, as a woman of color, in a city,

that informs who I am. But it does not in any way, which is why I've been extraordinarily clear, James, that I am obligated by facts, evidence, and the law. My having gone through this has nothing to do with whether I'm going to follow the facts where they lead me. Every charging decision that I make has to be brought with that to bear. She said it definitely did not lead her to make any sort of legal decisions. So John, what is going to happen now to R. Kelly?

He's got these very serious charges over his head. He's got a prosecutor who believes strongly in them and who will be pursuing them vigorously. But he's also himself been maintaining his defense. So it seems we have two sides heading for a clash. And what that means is this is very likely headed toward another trial. But this time, it's going to be Kim Foxx

on the other side. John, thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Wednesday, British Prime Minister Theresa May told members of her own party she would resign her office if Parliament approves her plan for withdrawing from the European Union, something it has repeatedly failed to do.

In a meeting with the lawmakers, May said, I know there is a desire for a new approach and new leadership, and I won't stand in the way of that. The Times reports that the offer was made at the urging of May's own advisors, who concluded that it was the only way to win the support of lawmakers who are deeply frustrated by her leadership. With Parliament unable to agree on terms for leaving the EU, an original Brexit deadline of March 29 has now been delayed until April 12. And…

In our automobiles, we don't pay more for seatbelts, for airbags. Those aren't optional. Those are all built in. And so should all critical safety features on aircraft. During a hearing on airline safety, senators from both parties pressed federal transportation officials on their process of approving the sale of Boeing's 737 MAX 8, which has crashed twice in the past five months. Any safety predictions?

Should they have been mandatory? Yes or no? Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts asked the head of the Federal Aviation Administration why Boeing was allowed to sell crucial safety functions, which may be linked to the crashes, as optional features on the jets. And whether or not a display is safety critical or not is a distinction that FAA is qualified to make. Do you believe that charging additional fees for these safety features may discourage airlines from equipping their airlines with important safety systems.

Yes or no? Well, Senator Markey, I find it hard to believe that a safety company like an airline would save a couple thousand dollars on an option that might improve safety on a multi-magnet. It may be hard for you to believe, but it's happening. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.