R. Kelly is not the only villain at the heart of Jim DeRogatis’ new book, Soulless
Image: Photo: Kamil Krzaczynski/Getty ImagesGraphic: Natalie Peeples Aux Features For Our Consideration
An ongoing investigation led by Homeland Security is expected to end with multiple federal indictments against R. Kelly. Officials in several states are questioning witnesses to verify recent allegations. In Chicago, the city where the R&B superstar was once considered a local hero, Kelly’s legal troubles continue to mount. After dream hampton’s documentary Surviving R. Kelly aired this January, Cook County charged him with 10 counts of aggravated child sexual abuse, and then an additional 11 counts of sexual assault and abuse just last week. He’s been arrested for unpaid child support and ordered to surrender his passport. Kelly also owes back rent on his recording studio, and he’s accrued fines for violating building zone codes. As Jim DeRogatis writes near the end of his new book, Soulless: The Case Against R. Kelly, “When Chicago decides to fuck with you, you are well and truly fucked.”
This might sound like redemption if it weren’t for the fact that R. Kelly has fucked up Chicago for the past three decades. “He may be indicted. He may be facing charges in Illinois, Georgia, and D.C. But he is still a free man,” DeRogatis said during our conversation about Soulless, which publishes June 4 from Abrams Press.
“As we are speaking, he’s holding two women in Trump Tower who are being told when to eat, when to sleep, and they will be physically and emotionally harmed if they break the rules,” DeRogatis said. Soulless is the culmination of the journalist and former Chicago Sun-Times music critic’s 18 years of covering the R. Kelly story, including interviews with dozens of the musician’s alleged victims. If there is one thing that becomes abundantly clear after reading this deep investigation into R. Kelly’s horrific actions, it’s that it’s all too little, too late.
In November of 2000, DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that read, “Robert’s problem—and it’s a thing that goes back many years—is young girls.” It sparked what would become a career-defining crusade for the writer that was often lonely, controversial, and sometimes dangerous to his personal safety. Soulless offers an in-depth account into the twisted trail of abuse that R. Kelly left in his wake, from DeRogatis’ first published story on the sexual abuse allegations against the singer, to the infamous child pornography video trial of the early ’00s, all the way to the recent claims that he is keeping women in a “sex cult.” The result is an infuriating, nauseating, and revelatory document of one man’s monstrous acts—and the society that allowed his monstrosity to go unchecked. If this book puts a spotlight on R. Kelly’s pathologies, it does so by condemning all the ways our systems of accountability have failed the girls of color who were under his sway.
DeRogatis quotes the alleged victims at length when detailing their experiences with R. Kelly, allowing their narratives to take precedence over his own voice. By his admission, he has interviewed 48 of R. Kelly’s victims, though he names only those who have agreed to go public or whose identities have become public through legal documents. Going as far back as 1991, their accounts are heartbreaking and horrific, almost repetitive in how experiences played out. Many were aspiring singers who R. Kelly promised to mentor. Several were approached by bodyguards in spaces popular with teens like the mall or the now gone Rock N Roll McDonald’s in Chicago. Tiffany Hawkins, the first woman to file a lawsuit against R. Kelly, in 1996, met him when he performed at Kenwood Academy on Chicago’s South Side, where she was a high school student. For these girls, and women, there were invitations to his studio, his penthouse, his mansion. Sexual contact was followed by sexual coercion, which was followed by a tyrannical control on their every move. They suffered physical and emotional abuse, to say nothing of the horrific repercussions of their plight.
However, we live in a culture that insists it needs to be said anyway, and even then some victims may never receive the benefit of the doubt, let alone true justice. This is the other narrative strain that runs throughout Soulless and expands the case against R. Kelly from that of one individual to that of a very broken society. Kelly is the most obvious villain in the book, but he is by no means the only one.
This spectacular failure of justice was all produced through means that are well within the legal playbook. Soulless often reads like a courtroom drama—except most courtroom dramas don’t let six years transpire between an indictment and the actual trial. That’s how long Kelly’s legal team, helmed by attorney Ed Genson, delayed the proceedings of the child pornography case against him, beginning in 2002, via motions and depositions that allowed Kelly to rule the charts during that time.
This was due in no small part to Judge Vincent Gaughan’s own approach to the case. In addition to sealing most of the records during that period, Judge Gaughan also ruled that only evidence directly related to the videotape could be presented in court. In other words, the four civil lawsuits filed against R. Kelly, his illegal marriage to underage singer Aaliyah, in 1994, and the flow of money between Kelly and the parents of the alleged victim were not presented at trial. Jurors were stunned to find out this information after the fact. This was legal.
Civil lawsuits were resolved via non-disclosure agreements that outlined monetary payments in exchange for silence. Some of the alleged victims were dissuaded from seeking criminal charges and one particular lawyer, Susan E. Loggans, benefited quite well from being the go-to lawyer for R. Kelly’s victims. This, too, was legal. A judge in Florida dropping charges on possession of child pornography because he considered the images to have been unlawfully obtained? Also legal. And what recourse do the family members of the women currently trapped in R. Kelly’s web have if they are no longer minors?
R. Kelly’s dirty secrets are revealed in this book, and so is the wide gap between true justice and the law. “I never felt like journalism and criticism mattered less,” DeRogatis writes about Kelly’s 2008 acquittal on the 14 counts of child pornography against him, which stemmed from a video allegedly showing him having sex with and urinating on an underage girl. I asked DeRogatis if he still felt that journalism didn’t matter, given the current charges against Kelly. He gave a long pause before answering: “Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court. Trump is in the White House… I think we gotta keep trying.” The R. Kelly case is not so much an aberration as it is part of a larger spectrum of violence against women, the most extreme and appalling symptoms of a society that is already rotten from within.
R. Kelly’s acquittal neutralized him as a threat in the eyes of the media, his audience, and many parents. In our cultural imagination, the video was a mock-worthy recording of a gross kink instead of rape. DeRogatis has no qualms about calling out the pop culture media landscape, the music critics, the concert promoters, and festival organizers, as well as the many artists and producers who aided and abetted the hipsterification of R. Kelly that was so widely celebrated in his headlining performance at the 2013 Pitchfork Musical Festival in Chicago. He points fingers at the major newspapers and outlets that ignored Kelly’s pattern of abuse for far too long and demurred in describing the urination in the video because it would upset readers. He describes the difficulties he had placing his 2017 story about R. Kelly’s newest predatory phase of keeping women in a so-called cult.
Despite this bleak topography, there is something affirming about DeRogatis’ refusal to let the story go. There’s been a lot of ink spilled over what to do with the art of deplorable artists, and in the era of the hot take, these debates turn into the reductive question of whether or not to “cancel” them. On the one hand, to believe art is created in some pure environment deprived of all the biases, subjectivities, and depravities of an individual or a society is willingly obtuse. On the other, canceling can feel too facile of a strategy, as if the answer is to take a Stalinist approach to our memories and doctor them so we can ignore the fact that we’ve found meaning in an artist’s output, maybe identified with it, established a personal relationship to it.
It shouldn’t stop us, however, from demanding accountability from others and, ultimately, ourselves. In a world that leaves so few venues for real justice, it is imperative that we wrestle with the consequences of our own fandom. There were so many instances where R. Kelly’s predatory behavior could have been stopped by the legal system, but it wasn’t. The persistent work of black activists, a handful of journalists, and the latest push of public outcry may be what stops him in the end. It’s the “we gotta keep trying” ethos that runs through the book.
DeRogatis has some choice aphorisms that pop up repeatedly in Soulless. One is the idea that a journalist’s duty is to follow a story until the end. I asked him what he envisioned that end being regarding the R. Kelly story. “You might think the end is when he goes to jail or he dies at the ripe old age of 90,” DeRogatis said. “To me the end is when the phone stops ringing and I stop getting emails from young women saying, ‘I’ve been hurt and no one will listen.’ That’s the end for me. But I will take those calls always.”
88 Comments
“As we are speaking, he’s holding two women in Trump Tower who are being
told when to eat, when to sleep, and they will be physically and
emotionally harmed if they break the rules,”
The only people still renting there are kidnappers, go figure…
Well for that area it’s probably the cheapest you can find now. Their sales prices have plummeted while nothing around it has.
So what you’re saying is lots of cheap floorspace with nobody around to hear anyone…well let’s just say ‘scream’ hypothetically?SOLD!
While I completely believe the veracity of the articles claim, the two girls in question vehemently denied this and there seems to be no proof that will legally allow anyone to do anything about it.
It may be skeezy but as far as I know brainwashing in and of itself isn’t a crime.
BRAINWASHING TO CONTROL AND RAPE LITTLE GIRLS????
They were both women underage when they started sleeping with him, and if he is physically abusing them, which would fit the pattern that’s a crime. He’s been charged with crimes against other women and girls. The point is to get him in jail so these women can be freed and get the psychological help they need.
I mean, of course they did, imagine the repercussions for them if they said they needed help and weren’t taken away IMMEDIATELY.
If R Kelly goes to trial they will be suspended and will have to testify under oath. A skilled lawyer can a witness in a lie.
I have nothing to add but the vomit off my shoes from every time I think of this human filth and those who excused/enabled him.
As a black person it pissed me off to end to hear other black folk defend this dude, and Micheal Jackson just off the fact that “they are trying to destroy our black icons”. (even back when there was a video evidence and everyone seen it. Jay-Z did TWO albums with this dude and he knew Aaliyah personally!)To me this is an instance where Kelly was famous enough in the R&B world but not pop enough so the white mainstream media didnt care really to dig in to say,”hey is anyone paying attention to R.Kelly?”
I don’t know. Celebrity has been a hell of a shield for a long time. Listening to the stories of rock icons in the 70’s and so many of them should have been jailed. As long as money can be made, even trash has value to some.
Look at Wienstein and Spacey. Look at Lois CK. Look at Matt Lauer. We allow bad people to do bad things as long as they entertain us. I think what is most terrifying really is how much evil we allow in the world for an hour or two of escaping all the other stressors in our lives.
Counterpoint: Matt Lauer has never “entertained” anyone.
Stipulated.
I was thinking about your reply, and I didn’t want to dismiss your view as a black person in the first half of your comment, I just can’t speak to it and left it alone.It has to suck dealing with folks in your community who support these guys because of that reason. I cannot imagine dealing with such very real threats to your community that fighting for R Kelly and his ilk feel like fighting for black culture in general.
I work with a bunch of middle aged white people (in California), and not one of them knew a damn thing about R. Kelly outside of Fly. I assume he has more recognition back east maybe, but that dude was pretty invisible to this demo for sure.
Same same.
The excusers and enablers were all of us. It’s crazy to think now how glibly we treated the fact that he urinated on a child and recorded it.It will happen again.
Fuck that “all of us.”Some people try to find out about the people they support and end it when they no longer deserve it.I listened to a few of his songs and when that pee tape (do we REALLY care about the pOTUS’s) came out I was done with that bag of shit.I haven’t listened to MJ since the 90’s. I stopped listening to Bowie around the same time. Luckily I never likes Zep.
Most people don’t want to be adults and take responsibility for their actions (that includes material and social support of criminals). I (and a lot of people) refuse to be lumped in with those droning assholes.
I’m not saying I’m Huey, but I sure as hell ain’t Riley.
You know what I’d like to see done, for folks like R. Kellly and Keith Raniere, people who use their power to abuse the vulnerable in every way imaginable? Flip the tables. Bring back the old military justice punishment of the gauntlet. In Kelly’s case, I’d turn him loose in Chicago, in nothing but a pair of underwear, and he’d have to cover one mile, and in the space of that mile, anyone along the way can take a shot at him, without any legal repercussions, using whatever they have on hand…bricks, bottles, you name it.
I know you’re (most likely) not serious when you say this is something you’d like to see done, but – No. Gross!They do that in some parts of the world – where the mob takes over and lights some criminal on fire – even now in 2019. I don’t care what the person’s done, I’m never going to be in favour of mob justice, as I feel it dehumanises everyone!
ANY OFFENSE AGAINST AN INNOCENT CHILD DESERVES THE WORST PUNISHMENT IMAGINABLE!!!
I think R. Kelly is still popular enough that people would stick up for him. He’s had people volunteer to pay his bail.
SICK BLIND PEOPLE!!!
Some kneegrows still think OJ is innocent and the earth flat …
No that’s ok we don’t need to do barbaric things like that. We need to turn the justice system into less of a revenge system as it is, your proposal won’t help with that.
what in the actual fat hell are you even talking about
I know but if we do it that way, then innocent people like the Central Park Five would get murdered and not just railroaded into jail.
Benefit of the doubt is something I have found myself giving less of over the years with artists, actors and musicians. There are more affirmations daily. I look into Kelly’s face and feel my bile rise. If he were stood before me I’d have no choice but to reconfigure it.
There are a lot of people in this world, that for their own pleasure objectify, control, abuse and violate other people. It is horrific. To be even more shocking, many of them vote Democrat.
Oh my god, are you serious?
Veritas is not wrong if they are referring to the entertainment industry. Mostly liberal. Weinstein voted Dem.
Nope, he’s not incorrect, just disingenuous.
I only knew Jim DeRogatis for his incredible (and genuinely moving: you can see DeRogatis generally loved the subject) book on Lester Bangs “Let It Blurt”. But besides being a great reviewer, he turns out to be a great guy and someone who does his best to do good. We need more folks like him in the world right now. It’s people like him who make feel a little better about humanity. By the way and not related to anything, the “Let It Blurt” book mentions this crazy song they would put on at their favorite bar. It was some obscene song that started innocent enough and then runs amok. Don’t listen to it over speakers friends: it starts off innocent enough and then changes tracks.
I love him on Sound Opinions.
I don’t like Sound Opinions or him as a critic but he has done tremendous reporting on this story, even long before this book or Surviving R. Kelly his was alone voice making this public. He deserve some stress accolades for work.
lmao at the stars for this comment. NO ONE likes sound opinions.
I love him on Sound Opinions.
Wow, I had no idea that he’s accrued fines for violating building zone codes. Dude’s in trouble.
Capone’s taxes. Get the bastard behind bars any way you can
In Chicago, that’s practically an act of war.
Homeland Security? This sounds closer to a matter for regular police.
Trafficking underage women across state lines for illegal sexual purposes: federal case and the FBI operates under the Homeland Security umbrella.
Oh, I thought the FBI was independent of them.
I am very curious about who watches his captives when he’s out of the house. Kelly is a busy man who travels a lot, he would not be able to hold those women hostage without staff enforcing his abusive rules for him. He can’t be a one person cult, his entire entourage has collaborated with him.
Probably they enforce each other a lot–once your abuser gets inside your head like that, you can become convinced that you’ll get better treatment if you can only tear your fellow captives down. It’s tremendously sad how easily someone with no scruples or ethics can create a system in which the people they hurt wind up willing collaborators in their own enslavement.
The women/girls may police each other but I doubt that he doesn’t have paid employees. Any celebrity singer with his profile/wealth has a whole network of people running their households. Kelly will have personal assistants, managers, security etc who all help him conceal his abuse.
I’m sure you’re right.
HIS ENTOURAGE DEFINITELY HELP HIM HE HAD HELP KEEPING THESE GIRLS IN CONTROL…THEY’LL DO ANYTHING HE WANTS BECAUSE HE HAS A FAT WALLET…HOPEFULLY THEY’LL BE DEALT WITH AS WELL!!!
If you watched the documentary his security watches the women.
I did, which is why I wonder why we aren’t hearing more about them being given deals by law enforcement to turn on him.
We don’t know how long his current team he has now been working for him. They may not be witnesses to the cases. As complex cases take time to compile the evidence an identify witnesses we don’t know who the DA/ police are interviewing.Not surprised if none of them “flip” he seems to be able to find people who will be loyal to him.
This was a really well done article. Kinja would be mad 😁
“Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court. Trump is in the White House… I think we gotta keep trying.” What does this mean? Brett Kavanaugh the highly successful, brilliant and completely qualified judge who despite uncorroborated claims against him was confirmed to the Supreme Court? Donald Trump who after decades of rising and falling on the whims of real estate and economic tides reinvented himself, forged a popular brand and became President of the United States. Those are success stories. What do they have to do w/ R. Kelly?
Kavanaugh committed repeated perjury. On both big (lying about use of stolen documents) and small (a dozen things we all heard) things. Those are obvious and proven. But I’m sure he was telling the truth about the sexual assault. Sure thing! Also, I have never heard any jurist describe him as brilliant. A competent and well connected political operative, for sure. But brilliant? Trump is an admitted sexual abuser. You don’t see the parallel?R Kelly was a near homeless street musician who became one of the most successful artists of our time. That’s not a success story?Someone is being disingenuous!
It is known and spoken about in many circles that Kavanaugh is a brilliant jurist and makes many on the current court appear to be simpletons. His work and contributions to the judiciary are not at all in question and he has received nothing but praise and honor from his peers. Your claims about perjury etc..are partisan talking points that have no basis in fact. Anything else argued would be disingenuous.Trump was a notorious woman chaser like many wealthy in his youth. He was a known adulterer which led to his divorce etc. He also has said some off color remarks about women in the company of friends etc..But, this is nothing like R. Kelly. That too would be a disingenuous argument.
Which justices on the court does Kavanaugh make appear as a “simpleton.” If it is anyone other than Garland, you are full of it. Also possess provide examples of His exemplary contributions to the judiciary. You talk as if he is Brandeis or Learned Hand, when he’s been a consistent partisan foot soldier.His use of stolen documents from political opponents and lying about it under oath is not conjecture. It is proven fact. Emails proving it have been released. It was kind of a big story! Sorry you missed it. And let’s ignore the obvious lies in the SCOTUS testimony. How naive do you have to believe a “devil’s triangle” is a drinking game like quarters? Or volunteering that he got into Yale with no connections (even though he was a legacy that attend the most expensive high school in the mid-Atlantic), or his Facebook comments about a classmate or saying a term sex was actually farting? Just pathetic things to lie about. Also applies to you.
I thought it was brilliant how many times he said “I like beer” and “I like to drink” during his job interview.
Listen you pissant, I was campaigning for Jack Kemp before you realized libertariansm was an untenable ideology. Don’t give me shit about partisanship. I’ll compare my Republican bona fides to your sloppy bullshit any day of the week. You probably think the Federalist Society is a show tune from Hamilton.
Gat your head out of your own asshole, Heritage Foundation.
Trump says he likes to kiss women without asking, and “grab them by the pussy”. Hence, admitted sexual abuser.
They’re both also sexual predators dumbass.
Because they’re all fucking trash?
Holy shit look at all the (dumb) words you’ve written to garner ZERO stars.
I’m sure that wasn’t your intent, but WOW that’s some sort of record.
Sometimes the truth doesn’t get stars. Doesn’t need them.It was obvious that the article was making a political point. The problem was that point was a bad one. I pointed that out. Kavanaugh was singularly qualified for his role and his name was dragged through the mud by the Dems who had nothing but uncorroborated testimony. Trump is not a role model but he is a brand that won the 2016 Presidential Election and has spurred on and presided over one of the greatest moments in the American economy on record. His achievements speak for themselves.They are in no way like the troubled, perverted and enabled R. Kelly.
Lol, sure
I bet every single one of his enablers know the exact time and place in their lives where R. Kelly’s seemingly innocuous proclivities proved themselves to be very real perversions and on that day they justified his actions somehow. That day is the day they have nightmares about and should be on their knees asking God for forgiveness.
If am surprised that not 1 father, brother, cousin, boyfriend, friend in that Chicago community would have been so fearful of jail that they wouldn’t have taken matters into their own hands to stand up for their daughter, sister or cousin etc..
A rich man moves the justice system to his benefit?Oh, the shock may just KILL me!Somebody alert Jeffrey Epstein, he’ll be shocked to hear about…oh, he already knew? My mistake. Well, let O.J. know because…he did it already? Okay, well, Michael Jackson will be really interested, right? Oh…he got off. Right.
Honest question: when journalists are reporting on such serious accusations, how do they determine that the information they’re getting is as close to true as can be?It seems to me if there are 40+ women saying “this guy did this to me”, and if their respective stories more or less match up with each other, that would suggest they’re telling the truth. But how would one minimize the risk that it’s a hell of a coordinated effort to lie? To be clear: I’m certainly not suggesting that any of these women reporting against R. Kelly are lying, I’m just wondering what the journalistic process is that helps ward off or minimize the potential for misreporting or not getting all the necessary information.
This turd was in my town a few months ago to do a show at a club called “Dirty South,” which looks as abandoned and as smarmy as it sounds.I hate my this town
I’m originally from that town myself and have rarely been more disturbed by it. And that’s saying something.
Good to hear that you escaped.
It’s not a bad place to return to for a long weekend, maximum. 🙂
I’m sure you’re always welcome. And bring your good spirits with you 🙂
CAN’T WAIT TO HEAR ABOUT HIS PRISON EXPERIENCE WHEN HE’S BEHIND BARS WITH THE LABEL “CHILD MOLESTER”!!!I’M SURE MANY FATHERS WON’T BE FANS!!!R.KELLY MEETS BUBBA….
This was due in no small part to Judge Vincent Gaughan’s own approach to the case. In addition to sealing most of the records during that period, Judge Gaughan also ruled that only evidence directly related to the videotape could be presented in court. In other words, the four civil lawsuits filed against R. Kelly, his illegal marriage to underage singer Aaliyah, in 1994, and the flow of money between Kelly and the parents of the alleged victim were not presented at trial. Jurors were stunned to find out this information after the fact. This was legal.That’s not exactly Gaughan’s “own approach”. Judges are generally very stringent about introducing evidence unrelated to the offense with which a person is charged, specifically because it can be extremely prejudicial.A judge in Florida dropping charges on possession of child pornography because he considered the images to have been unlawfully obtained? Also legal.Yes, that’s a little thing called the Fourth Amendment. I don’t disagree that there are many, many ways that society failed in the case of R. Kelly, but the right to protection against unreasonable search and seizure is already under stress these days, and it would be better not to fall prey to right wing narratives about how we just need to get rid of constitutional protections for the accused and lock the bastards up.
Yeah, because the American judicial system has certainly been working out like gangbusters for the not-wealthy and non-trashbag people.
Yes, judges are generally very stringent about introducing evidence unrelated to the offense in the case of Bill Cosby they had dozens of witnesses who spoke about their experiences with Cosby which had no relationship to the sexual assault of Andrea Constand. I don’t think establishing a pattern behavior erodes the fourth amendment nor do I think the author was advocating for the elimination of the right against illegal search and seizure. Sometimes the laws need to be tweaked because we get better at understanding the nature of a crime. Ten years ago we didn’t have revenge porn laws and forty years ago we did not have rape shield laws. There is something wrong with our legal approach to sexual abuse and rape that fails victims hopefully some legal genius can figure it out without impacting on civil liberties.
There were not “dozens” of witnesses allowed to testify about unrelated events at the Cosby trial. The judge only allowed one at the first trial, five at the second, based on how closely their claims matched Constand’s. That’s the balancing act with evidence of similar fact — you cannot allow the jury to arrive at a guilty verdict based overwhelmingly on evidence not directly related to the crime a person is charged with. It’s obvious why this rule exists.Framing the second issue as “it was legal to dismiss the case against Kelly because the only evidence was obtained in violation of his constitutional rights, isn’t that awful?” and presenting it like it’s nothing more than a judge’s whim is actively harmful to perceptions of how constitutional protections work.
Thank you for the correction about the number of witnessesyou cannot allow the jury to arrive at a guilty verdict based overwhelmingly on evidence not directly related to the crime a person is charged with. It’s obvious why this rule exists.
Perhaps this is a problem in getting rape convictions? It seems that the increase in witnesses from one to five helped get the conviction. On the second point, I took it to be more of an indictment of the shoddy police work that allowed Kelly to get away with possessing child porn.
In the Cosby case, the first trial was inconclusive because of two jurors, so it’s impossible to know if having a few more “similar fact” witnesses made a difference in the outcome.In general, of course, allowing the prosecution to introduce a high volume of such evidence would make convictions more likely. That’s precisely why it’s not allowed in anything beyond small doses, because at a certain point it becomes prejudicial and threatens to mislead from the actual charge. The ranks of the wrongfully convicted are already replete with people whose past criminal history was given too much weight in deciding the case.
In general, of course, allowing the prosecution to introduce a high volume of such evidence would make convictions more likely. Given the poor conviction rates for rape perhaps that is the change that is needed. Again, I’m sure some great legal mind can write something that won’t curtail the rights of defendants.
It does inherently curtail the rights of the defendants, though, because they’re being charged for one particular offense; you ultimately have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they committed that particular offense, not that they may have done somewhat similar things in the past.You’re very focused on sexual assault trials in this, but that sort of procedure would have to be available to all criminal cases, and it would undoubtedly result in many more wrongful convictions.
Since this is an article about sexual abuse and assault and the failure of the legal system to help black victims, I thought I this would be the appropriate forum to focus on rape as opposed to other crimes. My brother was a prosecutor; he was frustrated with difficulty with securing convictions, especially black women, and felt at times judges tied his hands. Four people he tired for rape and failed to convict wound up back in court one person had attacked two elderly women, another molested a mentally impaired man, kidnapped a raped a woman at a bus stop on her way to work, another was caught mid attack assaulting his neighbor.There are additional things that can be done to address the problem from encouraging people to report to improving police intake. As you pointed out, they were able to add more witnesses to the Cosby trial without violating his civil rights. If rape shield laws are not available to all criminal cases, a specific remedy could be devised to improve outcomes in a rape trial. I’m not interested in seeing anyone go to prison who is innocent, but I believe there are legal minds out there who take this on, think out of the box, because the status quo is not working. Unless you don’t, there are any problems with how rape cases are tried, which perhaps I should have considered.
That final bit about the endgame hits hard. We can send Harvey Weinstein, or Bill Cosby, or R. Kelly to jail. We can make sure that the likes of Kevin Spacey and Louis CK can no longer be predatory influences on their industries. But there’ll still be others out there, and there will still be women asking to be heard. Once we as a society are more prone to hearing victims and pursuing abusers, then maybe there won’t be as many of those phone calls DeRogatis talks about.
i think this r kelly guy might be an asshole
Weird mention of Kavanaugh from DeRogatis, since Kavanaugh is obviously innocent. Maybe he meant it in the opposite way, how the work of a few genuinely good conservative journalists was able to poke holes in the contradictory, sometimes ridiculous and clearly false accusations against him?