After R. Kelly sentencing, we revisit how the trial shocked us – and what shouldn't
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R&B star R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison Wednesday — nine months after he was found guilty of nine counts of sex trafficking and racketeering.
The official sentence followed a six-week long trial in September that featured graphic testimony from dozens of accusers, many who emotionally detailed how Kelly manipulated, abused and humiliated them when they were underage.
Some details from the trial were intended to startle us: The accusation that the singer believed he had gotten then 15-year-old singer Aaliyah pregnant and arranged to marry her so she couldn't testify against him. The accusation that he knowingly spread herpes to several of his young victims. The accusation that one of the victims, then 16, was slapped and choked until she passed out because she texted a friend.
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But sexual assault experts say some revelations should not have been surprising: that Black girls were brutally victimized, that many individuals around Kelly were complicit and that it's taken more than two decades for much of the public to care.
"Many survivors of Kelly’s abuse – women and men of color, who were long ignored and pushed aside – came forward and spoke out powerfully throughout the trial," the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network said in a statement at the time. "Today's verdict was made possible by their courage and persistence in being heard, and we thank them for their resilience during a difficult and very public process. We hope that today’s verdict empowers survivors everywhere to feel that they are not alone.”
Society has long failed victims of sexual violence. Rape, sexual assault and child sexual abuse are pervasive social problems, yet justice for survivors and accountability for perpetrators remain rare. But sexual violence experts say Black women and girls face particular challenges around victimization: They experience disproportionate rates of sexual violence, find it much harder to be believed and are often reluctant to engage with law enforcement for fear that accessing that system will result in more harm.
"Black girls have historically and culturally been disproportionately impacted by sexual violence," said Indira Henard, executive director of the D.C. Rape Crisis Center. "This case is so powerful because it puts center stage the sexual violence that Black women and girls experience every day."
More than a third of Black women have experienced some form of sexual violence during their lifetime, according to the National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community. One in 4 Black girls will be sexually abused before the age of 18.
The Kelly case may have commanded our attention because of his fame and power, but the experiences of his alleged victims are not uncommon.
"We can be outraged about R. Kelly, and we should be outraged, but we also have to recognize that there are R. Kellys everywhere. And not in terms of just entertainers; I'm talking about in our families, in our churches, our mosques our synagogues," said Aishah Shahidah Simmons, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and adult rape and editor of the anthology "Love WITH Accountability: Digging Up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse." "We have a responsibility to see that."
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'This doesn't just happen in a silo'
Kelly faced a handful of women in his current case, but he is accused of physically and sexually abusing scores of girls and women while the music industry looked away. In 2008 Kelly was tried in a high-profile child pornography case, but the jury found him not guilty.
"This has been going on for over 20 years," said Tonya Lovelace, a survivor of child sexual abuse and domestic violence and the former founding CEO of the Women of Color Network. "R. Kelly was aided by his staff, by the folks surrounding him. This doesn't just happen in a silo."
Lovelace said the pain and abuse Black women and girls experience is frequently minimized or outright ignored.
"We live at the intersections of race and gender. People do the most harm at the deepest of the margins because people aren't looking there," she said. "People who seek to do harm, do harm there because no one's watching."
Black women and girls also find themselves at some of the highest rates of sexual violence, experts say, because for generations the country sanctioned their abuse. Black women and girls experienced rampant sexual violence during the period of enslavement, and that legacy still lives on contemporarily, they say.
"Black women have experienced probably one of the most egregious histories in this country – of slavery, of forced sexual experiences of rape and sexual assault," Lovelace said. "This is the historical context. R. Kelly's case is happening against the backdrop of centuries of violence against Black women."
Black women and girls face additional barriers
When #MeToo first exploded, many advocates and survivors demanded that the public and the criminal justice system "believe women" – a phrase that implores people not to brush off victims at the outset. Sexual violence experts say it is even harder for Black survivors to be believed, which dissuades them from reporting and which keeps them from getting support even when they do.
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For every Black woman who reports rape, at least 15 Black women do not report, according to the National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community.
Black women and girls also face additional barriers to reporting.
"Because our assailants are often Black and brown men, we are afraid to call the police or we have greater concern because they too are maligned. They are also targeted," Lovelace said. "You have the most neglected dealing with the most targeted."
In the Kelly case, Lovelace said, his victims were dealing with someone who may be targeted as a Black male, but who also had structural access to power.
"They felt like there was no way they'd be heard," she said of his victims.
'This was childhood rape'
While the accusers in Kelly's trial are adults now, many of them testified about abuse that happened when they were children.
"What people need to realize ... is that this was childhood rape. This was childhood sexual abuse," Lovelace said.
Children are manipulated and groomed to trust their perpetrators and to remain silent about abuse. But Black girls can be seen as complicit because of what researchers call "adultification bias," which projects negative stereotypes of hypersexualization onto Black girls and causes adults to empathize with them less than their white peers.
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"We see them as wanting, willing and able," Simmons said. "Even if, let's say, they lied about their age, they pursued him, all of that, they're still children."
Jerhonda Johnson Pace, one of Kelly's accusers, testified that she had sex with Kelly when she was 16, under the age of consent, though she told him she was 19. When she eventually revealed her real age to Kelly, she says he continued a sexual relationship with her.
Experts say to better support Black women and girls, there needs to be a collective acknowledgment that this abuse goes well beyond Kelly's victims.
"There are all these ways in which children are looking for love and attention and this is what they get," Simmons said. "Rather than blaming them, we have to embrace them, protect them, and hold those people who are causing harm, not just the person performing the sexual act, but all the bystanders, accountable."
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: R. Kelly sentenced, exposes abuse of Black women and girls
