Azriel Clary, 21, and Joycelyn Savage, 23, told Gayle King of “CBS This Morning” that they were “absolutely” in love with Kelly, 52, who was charged last month in Chicago with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four women, three of whom were minors at the time.
Beyond his criminal case, Kelly also has been accused of harboring a so-called sex cult, in which he abused women and controlled every aspect of their lives, including when they can go to the bathroom.
The interview with Clary and Savage, who have stood by Kelly in court, seemed unlikely to settle questions about what exactly goes on in the singer’s home. While the women’s parents say they are brainwashed and much of the world now sees Kelly as an unrelenting sexual predator, who has been trailed for decades by accusations of abuse and sex with underage girls, Clary and Savage lashed out at their families and said they were happy as Kelly’s girlfriends.
The interview followed the airing on Wednesday of a heated conversation between Kelly and King of CBS, in which the singer denied all of the accusations against him. “I have been assassinated,” said Kelly, who was sometimes shouting, swearing and in tears. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
King said that Kelly had agreed not to be present for the interview with Clary and Savage, but that he entered the room behind them after it began. King said Kelly would “cough very loudly,” and that the women were “certainly aware that he was there.”
Kelly, who had been out on bond since last week, was sent back to jail Wednesday night for his failure to pay his ex-wife more than $160,000 in child support. The Detroit Police Department also said Wednesday that it was investigating allegations that Kelly had sex with a 13-year-old girl there in 2001. “We have reached out, at the direction of the victim, to her lawyer and we are eagerly waiting to speak to her,” James Craig, the Detroit police chief, said in a statement, adding that they had not yet made contact with her.
Clary said she met Kelly at one of his concerts when she was 17. “When I first met Robert, my parents told me to lie about my age,” she said. “He thought that I was 18.”
She denied having sex with Kelly while underage, but said her parents had encouraged her “to take photos with him, sexual videos with him” in case “they ever have to blackmail him.”
“What they’re doing right now is all for money,” Clary added. “If you can’t see that, you’re ignorant, and you’re stupid,” adding expletives.
Savage, who met Kelly when she was 19, backed up Clary’s version of events. Her parents were “just out here trying to get money and scam, because they didn’t agree on what happened with music,” Savage said.
Both women’s parents have said their daughters were aspiring singers seeking Kelly’s guidance in music. Clary and Savage denied that they wanted to pursue music careers.
Clary’s parents, in a statement Thursday through their lawyer, Michael Avenatti, denied ever having asked Kelly for money. “Sadly, like so many girls before them,” the statement said, “Azriel and Joycelyn Savage have been manipulated and convinced by Kelly to lie to protect him from serious criminal charges.”
Savage’s family held a news conference in Atlanta on Wednesday, in which they also denied asking Kelly for money and said they felt she was being controlled. “From Day One, the only thing we want to do is hear from our daughter and know she’s fine,” said Savage’s father, Timothy.
Later, the Savage family received what it said was its first call from Joycelyn in two years. “You know that I’m happy,” she could be heard telling them. “You know exactly where I’m at.”
Timothy Savage and his wife, Jonjelyn, first spoke out publicly about their daughter’s relationship with Kelly in a 2017 Buzzfeed article about the women living with the R&B; star. The Savages later appeared in the Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired in January and led to renewed law-enforcement interest in the allegations against Kelly.
The Savages said they had told the FBI, as well as police in Georgia and Illinois, that Joycelyn was “being held against her will” by Kelly. Representatives for the singer said at the time that authorities in Atlanta and Chicago had “made ‘wellness’ visits to check on the women in question and have found nothing to cause alarm.”
In January, a man identified as a manager for Kelly, Henry James Mason, was arrested and charged with making violent threats against Savage; Mason denied the charges and said that he had in fact tried to re-establish a connection between Joycelyn and her family. Savage said he had also been threatened by another associate of Kelly’s — who said he could “ruin him, his reputation, business and family” — before the Lifetime documentary aired.
Kelly, in his interview, had told King that he loved the women. “We have a relationship. It’s real,” he said. “I’ve known guys all my life that have five or six women, OK. So don’t go there on me.”
He added that he had no reason to hold the women captive. “Why would I?” Kelly said. “How stupid would it be for me, with my crazy past and what I’ve been through — oh, right now I just think I need to be a monster, hold girls against their will, chain them up in my basement, and don’t let them eat, don’t let them out!”
CBS said it would air more from the interviews with Kelly and the two women in a primetime special on Friday.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.