As R. Kelly awaits trial in Chicago on child porn charges, a new sideshow on the R&B star’s personal life has opened up. It turns out he was boffing his publicist’s daughter.

You’re probably wondering how old the daughter was; fortunately, she’s 21, which is pretty old for Kelly, who is 41 and has been involved in at least three child-sex or child-pornography investigations.

The woman, Maxine Daniels, is the daughter of Regina Daniels, until recently a longtime publicist for Kelly, and George Daniels, who is described by the Chicago Sun-Times as a “noted music retailer” in Chicago. George Daniels has accused Kelly of having an inappropriate relationship with his daughter.

After Regina Daniels’ departure, Kelly’s camp released a statement, saying,

It’s hard to take seriously the moral outrage expressed by George and Regina Daniels over R. Kelly’s relationship with Mr. Daniels’ adult daughter, Maxine. The fact is that they had no problem with the relationship—indeed, they encouraged it—while Ms. Daniels was on Mr. Kelly’s payroll.

The statement continues:

It was Regina Daniels, then working as a publicist for Mr. Kelly, who persuaded him to attend her stepdaughter’s 21st birthday party. And it was Regina Daniels who shortly thereafter gave her stepdaughter Mr. Kelly’s private phone number, with the admonition: ‘Don’t tell your father.’ It was only after Ms. Daniels resigned her position to avoid being fired for incompetence that her stepdaughter’s relationship suddenly became an issue for her and her husband.

There matters stood, until the daughter, Maxine Daniels, came out last week to say what really happened. Her version, given to a Chicago Sun-Times reporter, is this:

I take full responsibility for my actions. My stepmother and father didn’t know about my relationship with the singer because I knew and he knew that they wouldn’t approve … so I tried to keep it a secret, but when my stepmother found out about our relationship, she resigned because she felt that Rob had ‘crossed the line’ by dating a girl that he has known since she was 7 years old.

The “crossed the line” phrase comes from a statement from Regina Daniels when she left Kelly’s employ: “There are some lines you don’t cross.”

Let’s see: Over the 14 years she worked for him, R. Kelly married a fifteen-year-old, lied about it, and then was forced to have the marriage annulled; had a video tape become public showing him performing a variety of sex acts on a girl—including urinating on her—police say was in her early teens at the time; and had a digital camera surface containing what police said were photos of him having sex with another underage girl. (Kelly goes on trial on charges stemming from the videotape in May; charges from the digital camera were dropped after a judge in Florida disallowed the search of the house that produced the camera. )

Those are the documented charges against Kelly. Even by the elastic moral rules of the music business, the lines that Regina Daniels thinks you can cross seem pretty out there.

(By the way, how can you assess the competence of a publicist who has a client like that to work with? The amazing thing about Kelly is that he has been able to continue his career in the five full years since the videotape came to light, enabled not just by a seemingly incompetent court in Chicago but also the radio stations that continue to play his music, the promoters who book his concerts, the other artists who record with him, and the fans who buy his tickets. Isn’t it weird that he’s allowed to tour, where young girls pay money to be in the same room with him? )