Reality star Porsha Williams is opening up about her own experience with R. Kelly when she was a 25-year-old aspiring singer.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta alum recalls being arranged to meet the disgraced singer at his recording studio in Chicago back in 2007. She says instead of being taken to his studio, she was taken to his house instead.
“I realized it was my opportunity to help anyone who’s been hurt by him,” she tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “There had been so many other instances where I had been abused by men that my mentality [at that time] was of an abused person, and that it was okay for me to be treated like that.”
After being introduced to Kelly, she was taken to his bedroom and left alone for hours. When Kelly finally arrived, he allegedly told her to take off her clothes. “I’ve already put myself in this position,” she writes in her new memoir The Pursuit of Porsha. “This is what you’re supposed to do. You have to. There is no turning back.”
Williams say Kelly two more times and witnessed other young women who were staying at the house. She decided to end their fling after she visited him once and heard a woman being beaten in another room.
She admits to keeping it a secret for many years.
“It’s not something you want to tell your mom, because my mom is a very strong woman and she did her very best in raising me,” Williams said. “And I think for any woman or man who’s been in an abusive situation, you don’t want to tell your parents because you don’t want them to think that they had let you down in any way. I don’t want her to think that she had done anything wrong. And so I took it upon myself.”
“But I was glad when I did, she was glad that I told her and we talked about it,” Williams adds. “She told me some of her experiences. And we just talked about how this should be told so other women don’t have to go through it.”
