R Kelly

R. Kelly may be going to prison for a very, very long time, but that doesn’t mean the saga of his mistreatment of women is over yet. According to TMZ, one of his alleged victims, Joycelyn Savage, wrote to the judge in his New York case ahead of his sentencing to ask for a more lenient sentence. In her letter, she introduces herself as “Robert Kelly’s fiancee,” suggesting that at some point in the past nine years — Savage is currently 26 years old and met Kelly when she was 17 — the pair became engaged.

She also asserts that “I’m not the victim that the government has portrayed me to be,” writing that the relationship between the two is “amazing” despite the near-30-year difference in age (Kelly is 55) and the disturbing circumstances under which they met. However, Savage’s parents, Timothy and Jonjelyn, are not convinced. They told TMZ through their attorney that Joycelyn never made any engagement known to the family, and wonder why she put it in a letter to the judge rather than mentioning it in court while under oath.

In 2017, Savage told TMZ in an interview that she was “not being brainwashed or anything like that,” insisting that she was staying with Kelly of her own free will shortly after it was reported that Kelly was keeping multiple young women in a “sex cult.” Obviously, it has been since revealed that his activities went much further than that, with a jury convicting Kelly of racketeering and sex trafficking; he was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Just days after suing the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, R. Kelly has been removed from suicide watch, according to Pitchfork. Kelly had been placed on suicide watch for the first time in October 2021 after being convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking in a federal case tried in New York in September. However, Kelly sued the prison last week after he was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being placed under observation again, calling the suicide watch conditions “harmful and punitive.”

He claims that he did not have any thoughts of self-harm and believes the additional measures — wearing a thin smock and being denied eating utensils — were intended to further punish him. Kelly’s lawsuit pursued an unspecified “award of compensatory damages for all emotional distress, humiliation, pain and suffering, and other harm.” Meanwhile, MDC Brooklyn filed a memo on July 2 saying that a staff psychologist had recommended the suicide watch after an in-person assessment, noting that Kelly had been allowed to keep some “comfort items and personal effects.”

In addition to his 30-year prison sentence, Kelly was ordered to get treatment for an unspecified sexual disorder and will have five years of supervised release upon the completion of his sentence. In August, he’ll have another trial in Chicago — this time, for child pornography.