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Surviving R Kelly review – disturbing but deeply flawed

This documentary series shares the appalling stories of women who claim they have suffered at the R&B star’s hands, but at times it feels exploitative

Scales. Scales are what you think of when you watch the six hours – and it will be the entire six hours you watch, waiting for the moment that pulls the whole incredible, appalling story into a comprehensible shape – of Surviving R Kelly (Crime+Investigation).

The scales of justice first. Where are they in this six-part documentary – already aired to much outrage and uproar in the US – that pulls together the rumours, allegations and court cases surrounding the talented, popular and lucrative phenomenon that is the R&B star Robert Kelly over his 30-year career? They began, basically, as soon as he was old enough for an interest in underage girls to be possible. In his 20s, he was hanging around the local high school and picking up teenagers. As his success grew, it seems, so did his appetites. Surviving R Kelly illuminates the timeline with the testimony of women who claim in detail that they suffered at his hands. Tales of being approached at 14, 15, 16 or 17 by the star or his people and invited back to his mansion abound. Once there, they were frequently “trained” by him, they say: kept apart from each other and their families; told not to talk back or talk at all; told to ask for permission to go to the lavatory or to watch television; told to have sex with him, and each other, whenever he felt like it. If they objected, they claim, they would be beaten, starved or ignored for days at a time.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2UFTBL9

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