Azriel Clary, an outspoken ex-girlfriend who used to live with R. Kelly, is striving to overcome her past and launch her own music career.
Kelly was accused of running a criminal scheme in which women and underage girls were recruited to have sexual activity with him.
Clary’s recent Instagram video, seen below, features her singing a cover of Billie Eilish’s “Ocean Eyes.”
Some of Azriel’s fans questioned why she partially hid her face with an emoji.
“The last video everyone said I was making ‘ugly faces,” Clary said in response. “But most singers that make the ugly faces [are] the best singers. Sorry about that. Next time it won’t be an emoji.”
In an interview with The Sun, Clary recounted her abuse at the hands of Kelly.
“Robert had a high sex drive, so usually 3 to 5 times a day was normal for him. It was always just something that happened, and if you did not want to participate, if you embarrassed him in front of other women, or even just did not perform well, he would tell you to leave or wait in the restroom with the water on until he was finished. And the majority of the time after he would tell you to turn the TVs up and he’d go in the bathroom and beat the woman that did not do what he wanted.”
“I think a lot of women are ashamed or embarrassed to come out because of stuff like that because it’ll be incriminating them… [they] are too embarrassed, humiliated, and ashamed to come out because this man had that much power to control them, to make them molest their younger niece or to molest their younger brother,” she said in January.
“Robert has his live-in girlfriends, he has girlfriends in every city. He has flings in every city… “I think that there’s hundreds of victims out there.”
R. Kelly has plead not guilty to all charges. “I am tired of all of the lies,” Kelly said in his now-famous interview with Gayle King of CBS News, seen below. This came on the heels of the explosive Surviving R. Kelly documentary, in which many of Kelly’s victims spoke out for the first time, and created a firestorm of outrage against the R&B singer, who had seemingly evaded consequence for so long.
In February 2019, Kelly was formally charged with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse.
Clary once defended Kelly once the media backlash ensued. But she later explained that she felt helpless and brainwashed.
“I definitely do believe that I was very naive and very brainwashed and manipulated by him,” Clary said. “And as much as I hate to say it I’m woman enough and I’m grown enough to admit that yes, I was brainwashed and yes, I was manipulated.”
While Clary continues her journey as a survivor, and as an aspiring musician, she can rest easy knowing that R. Kelly is imprisoned Chicago, awaiting his trial which was rescheduled to July of this year.
we’ve all been abused in some form or know someone that has been abused whether mentally, physically, or verbally. stop bashing victims. I’m sure she didn’t just say “today I’m going to let my boyfriend beat me up(:” – no woman ever does, I most definitely did not. https://t.co/5SQUREsYur
— Azriel Clary (@theonlyazriel) February 27, 2020
