Essence magazine has a very long conversation with Lisa Van Allen, who you will recall was the woman who testified she had had a number of threesomes with Kelly and the allegedly under-age girl police said was on the sex tape at the center of the case. Lots of very poignant stuff here. Like this:

Essence.com: So how did you go from being an extra [at a video shoot in Atlanta] to meeting him personally?

Van Allen: He sent his cousin over to me. This guy told me his cousin wanted to talk to me. I asked him who his cousin was, and he said, “R. Kelly.” I said, “Okay,” and he arranged for me to be taken back to his trailer. In between the scenes, he came back to the trailer and talked to me. I was very flattered. Out of all the girls at the video shoot, he picked me out of everybody to talk to. We ended up having intercourse.

Essence.com: You had sex with him in the trailer that same day?

Van Allen: Yes. He started with a kiss, and from there we leaned back, and I just didn’t stop him. I was kind of worried that he wouldn’t want to see me again after that, but I wasn’t worried about the actual act at that time because I was just honored that he picked me. Being a young girl, I was like, “Wow.” I wasn’t thinking as a woman would.

And this:

Essence.com: Is it true that you got pregnant by R. Kelly and had an abortion?

Van Allen: Yes. I had the abortion in 2000, right before the “I Wish” video shoot. I was the one braiding his hair in that video. When I told him I was pregnant, he asked me what did I want to do, and I told him I wanted to get an abortion.

(The story includes a denial from one of Kelly’s lawyers. Another of his young girlfriends has said she got an abortion after an alliance with him; this woman was under-age at the time.)

And this:

Essence.com: In retrospect, do you feel that your relationship with him was damaging to you?

Van Allen: Yeah. As you can see, it still bothers me when I think about what went on. It’s emotionally stressful just knowing how I felt, how vulnerable I was. How I wanted him to love me and accept me. I didn’t want to get him mad at me. And I didn’t know what real love was. He was the first man I had ever dealt with—I was 17 when I met him, I hadn’t dealt with men before. I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

Essence.com: If these allegations are true, some people have suggested that you are just as reprehensible as R. Kelly is—that you also were having sex with an underage girl. What is your response to that?

Van Allen: I didn’t know that she was 14. He left me in the dark just like everybody else was in the dark. People hear that I’m 27, and they think that I was an adult when it happened. They don’t realize that I was coming in to being a young woman. I didn’t know her real age. I didn’t know the truth.

Essence.com: Why do you think nobody else in R. Kelly’s circle has come forward about him and teenage girls?

Van Allen: Because they don’t want people to look at them in the wrong light, like how they’ve done me. You see how this case went. It was supposed to be about him, but when I came out, they just switched it all over to me.

Essence.com: The allegations and the video haven’t put a dent in R. Kelly’s career. He still has droves of devoted fans, and his albums still top the charts. Why do you think so few people seem to care about this issue?

Van Allen: It’s like no one wants to step up and take responsibility for what’s happening. I have no idea why more people don’t want to get involved and put themselves out there for our children. I guess if it was closer to home, maybe they would. If it was their child or their sister. But it shouldn’t be that way.

The first page of the interview is here.

The second page, the link to which is a little hard to find, is here.