As you might know, the R&B star R. Kelly is supposed to go on trial in Chicago on child-sex charges in May, more than five years after a videotape came to light of a figure the police say is the singer performing various sex acts with and on an under-aged girl.

Five years! It’s been so long that, these days, papers write about Kelly all the time and barely mention his legal problems.

Hitsville, as a public service, is bringing them and you up to date on what exactly R. Kelly did and has done that got him in the pickle he is in today. Last week, we detailed some of the singer’s greatest hits—”hits,” that is, in the sexual predator sense of the term.

This week, the story continues, from the poignant to the positively sickening. Last week, we got up to “Accusation #5.” Let’s continue!

In 1994, Kelly married a 15-year old girl. Married! Her name was Aaliyah Haughton; she was a singer and a protege of Kelly’s with whom, associates have said, he was having an affair. Without telling her what was going on, Kelly arranged an impromptu wedding at a suburban Chicago hotel and then swept her toward a plane. Fortunately, the girl called her parents. They came and got her and, articles have said, the pair never saw each other again. Accusation #6.

As rumors surfaced about the union, Kelly lied about it. But then Vibe magazine found a marriage certificate, on which Haughton’s age was listed as 18. The union was annulled a short time later. (Over the next six years or so Haughton, under the stage name Aaliyah, became a fairly big star before dying in a plane crash in the Bahamas in 2001.)

When the one girl tried to sue Kelly in Chicago, he filed a pre-emptive $30,000 suit against her, charging her with trying to blackmail him. He hired high-powered NY publicist Dan Klores—and got mentions of his lawsuit in several large papers, while the girl’s suit went unpublicized! Seems like the papers missed a big story: Reported the Chicago Sun-Times, several years later:

“Many celebrities are constantly being harassed and sued, and more often than not, they decide to settle,” a Kelly spokesman working with Klores told the Daily News in 1996. “Kelly has decided, ‘No way.’”

But sources said that Kelly reconsidered that hard-line position and settled with [the girl] on January 23, 1998, just four days after she gave a seven-hour deposition. The sources said that Kelly’s attorneys were shocked by what they heard in the session, and that Kelly quickly ended the case by paying Hawkins a quarter of a million dollars.

In 1998, Kelly picked up a 16-year-old girl at the so-called “Rock ‘n’ Roll McDonalds” in Chicago, just north of the Loop. They had an affair that lasted until she told him she was pregnant, GQ reported; one of Kelly’s associates drove her to the abortion clinic. Accusation # 7.

Kelly grew up on the South Side of Chicago. The profile of Kelly in GQ magazine says that “family members and early associates” said that Kelly had been abused by an older neighborhood man as a child.

They also said he had tried to commit suicide as a youth, but covered up the story of the resulting bullet wound by saying some kids who had been trying to steal his bike shot him.

Associates of Kelly have said as well that he can barely read or do basic math; he later confessed in a Vibe magazine story to being illiterate.

According to GQ, Kelly is estranged from his siblings and didn’t take care of his mother, who drove a beat-up car and could not pay her medical bills. After she died of cancer in 1997, Kelly declared that he had “found the lord”!

After the original Sun-Times story that revealed his pattern of preying on young girls, Kelly kept getting into trouble! The Chicago lawyer who handled the first four legal cases against Kelly represented at least one other victim as well. Accusation #8!

GQ also reported that Kelly’s personal hygiene left a lot to be desired; he could wear the same clothes for a week, the story said. Said one of his former assistants: “I could never understand the women. I’d be like, ‘How could you be with him when he stink like that?’” Smelly Kelly!

The videotape that really got Kelly into trouble was described as “well lit” and “crystal clear” by those who have seen it. Originally, his contention was that it was not he in the video; that’s what he told the interviewers in a cozy chat on BET in 2002. More recently, his lawyer has said his contention will be that the woman on the tape wasn’t underage.

Hey, isn’t this all part of the glamorous world of the modern pop star? Is Hitsville being prudish? A British magazine seems to have been the only publication to have asked Jim DeRogatis, the reporter who broke the R. Kelly story originally, about what the tape was like. DeRogatis said:

“[T]his is not Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson. It’s not fun and games. This girl has the disembodied look of a rape victim and he’s urinating in her mouth. It’s a sickening spectacle.”

In another interview, Kelly said:

“I’m not who these people are talking about. I’m not a criminal. I think I’m the only one that can understand how [Osama] bin Laden feels […] being someone that’s hunted down or being someone that’s constantly made to look like the devil himself.”

. . .

Last week’s R. Kelly SexFacts™ are here.

More R. Kelly SexFacts™ are coming soon! Remember, kids—“R. Kelly SexFacts”™ are based entirely on reporting in reputable publications!