After initially defending R.Kelly amid backlash from the scathing “Surviving R.Kelly” documentary, his former girlfriend Joycelyn Savage is now singing a new tune and admitting to being one of his “victims”.
“I am here to tell my story I will reveal information/secrets I’ve been sweared to not ever bring to light but I am willing to risk it all. This is my story on Mr. Kelly,” Savage wrote Saturday on the paid membership site Patreon, where she also invited subscribers to “see what I’ve been going through these past years.” The link was also shared on Savage’s shared on Twitter and Instagram accounts.
Savage’s claims mirrored the accounts shared by other women in Lifetime’s “Surviving R.Kelly” docuseries that helped lead to the Grammy award-winners fall from grace. The series brought renewed attention to the decades of allegations against Kelly, who was acquitted on charges of child pornography in a 2008 trial.
According to Savage, she met Kelly when she was 19, and began a relationship with him under the belief he would further her singing career.
“He would say it exactly like this ‘Baby girl you are going to be the next Aaliyah,’” Savage wrote in the Patreon post, referring to the late singer, whom Kelly illegally married in 1994, when she was just 15 years old. “There’s something’s about Robert & Aaliyah that I am going to reveal which everyone needs to know,” she added. “As one of his victim yes victim I’ve seen more and heard more!”
“Robert told me soo many lies my 19 year old mind believed everyone of one them,” the post continued, with Savage saying Kelly had promised to release a couple of songs she recorded in his studio, but he never did.
Savage moved in with Kelly in 2015, and said he became “so controlling” and “started giving me commands.” On at least one instance, he allegedly choked her when she didn’t address him as “Master” or “Daddy.”
“I had bruises around my neck, and I was told by him to wear a turtle necks or a scarf to cover them up whenever he would take me out in public,” Savage wrote. “I was frightened to tell anyone about this because of what he may do next.”
Savage uploaded the messages over the weekend after a nearly two-year hiatus from social media.
“I am risking my life for many others,” she wrote.
Her Patreon story revealed her two pregnancies by Kelly and how she got an abortion both times. But, according to Kelly’s attorney, Steve Greenberg, Savage is seeking “her own personal profit.”
“It is unfortunate that [Joycelyn] now seeks to make money by exploiting her long time, loving relationship with Robert,” Greenberg said Saturday in a statement to Variety. “Obviously if she were to tell the truth no one would pay so she has, unfortunately, chosen to regurgitate the stories and lies told by others for her own personal profit. We know the real facts, and it was not until the money ran out that she decided anything was wrong. Hopefully people will see it for the obvious profiteering it is.”
In one post, Savage wrote that Kelly
“always had a fetish for pissing on his girls/woman. While he would piss on us he would make us swallow his piss and if we threw up piss would turn into feces. I’ve been peed on numerous of times.”
This statement provided proof behind the 2002 videotape of Kelly urinating on a minor while sexually assaulting that became the center of his 2008 child pornography trial.
In her posts, Savage also shares how Kelly hired assistants to monitor her behavior, including telling the girls what to say when speaking with her parents on the phone. Savage’s claims compare to similar stories of Kelly controlling his girlfriend’s every movement, such as being told when they could eat or use the bathroom.
“Why would someone claim to love keep me locked up like some damn animal,” Savage wrote in one of the posts.
Savage’s new claims come after she and Azriel Clary previously defended Kelly in an interview with CBS host Gayle King back in March. At the time, Savage claimed, “our parents are basically out here trying to get money and scam.” Their interview was taped the same day Kelly infamously lashed out at King while vehemently denying the serial sexual abuse claims.
According to King, while Savage and Clary spoke with her, Kelly stood off-camera and would interject with coughs and attempts to cut off their conversation. Savage also defended Kelly in a 2017 TMZ video, but in her post on Sunday, she claimed Kelly and his assistants forced her to record the video.
“What you see in any of my interviews is just a split second of what we are allowed to speak on,” she wrote. “You don’t know that we are scripted.”
According to Savage, Kelly
“always would say ‘All this can stop today, you want a career? Or do you want to live a normal life,’” she wrote, “basically trying to make me do what he wants.”
