The second season of Lifetime’s harrowing documentary detailing decades of abuse allegations against the musician covers a larger culture of complicity
If the world worked as it should, there would never have been a Surviving R Kelly, the documentary series detailing nearly three decades of alleged sexual abuse – much of it against minors, and almost entirely against young African
American women – by the R&B musician. By the time the series, produced by the activist dream hampton, aired on Lifetime last January, the allegations against R Kelly were long within the public domain, and mounting. But it took a six-hour television event to do what multiple public lawsuits, highly publicized child sexual abuse images and trial, a widely circulated tape involving sexual acts with a 14-year-old, a bombshell BuzzFeed News article by the reporter Jim DeRogatis, and the #MuteRKelly movement were not able to do: heat simmering public discomfort – or, worse, willful blindness – over the singer’s conduct into a full boil.
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