A woman who appeared in the Surviving R Kelly documentary has claimed the singer threatened to expose her sexual history if she did not drop a lawsuit against him.
Faith Rodgers has made a number of allegations, including that she was “abused by Kelly” and that he “had given her a sexually transmitted disease”.
She claims that during their year-long relationship, which began when she was 19, he used to “lock her up for hours” and insist she called him “daddy”.
At a news conference in New York, her lawyer Gloria Allred alleged that Kelly sent the letter in October to another of Ms Rodgers’s lawyers.
In the letter, a person identifying himself as R Kelly wrote that if the suit went ahead, he would have “10 personal male witnesses” give evidence about Ms Rodgers’s sex life. It said she should stop if she “really cares about her own reputation”.
The letter said the singer would also demand medical documentation of her claim that he gave her herpes.
The singer’s lawyer, Steve Greenberg, claimed the letter “looks fake” and Kelly denies any misconduct. “He doesn’t write letters,” he said.
The letter was sent a few weeks after the singer was served with the lawsuit accusing him of demeaning Ms Rodgers and subjecting her to “non-permissive, painful and abusive sex”. Now 21, she said she was “vulnerable” when she first met the singer at an after-show party.
Surviving R Kelly detailed years of accusations of his alleged physical and emotional abuse of women, as well as claims that he ran an “abusive cult”.
