R&B superstar R. Kelly denied allegations he
sexually abused women and girls in his first public comments since being
indicted last month.
“I didn’t do this stuff. This not me,” Kelly told “CBS This Morning”,
saying he was “fighting” for his life in an interview to air Wednesday.
Excerpts were released on Tuesday.
He dismissed the allegations against him as rumours.”Whether they’re old rumours, new rumours, future rumours, not true,”
said Kelly, who became upset and emotional during the interview.
Kelly, 52, pleaded not guilty late last month in Chicago to 10 counts of aggravated criminal sex abuse.
He
spent three nights behind bars and was released after coming up with
$100,000, 10 percent of the $1 million bail set in court.The sex acts are alleged to have occurred between May 1998 and January 2010, according to prosecutors.
Kelly has been accused of sexual misconduct before. In 2002 he was charged after allegedly filming himself having sex
with a 14-year-old girl. He was tried and acquitted of child pornography
charges in 2008.
Now he says his reputation is being used against him.”People are going back to my past, OK? That’s exactly what
they’re doing. They’re going back to the past and they trying to add all
of this stuff now to that.
To make all this stuff that’s going on now
feels real to people,” Kelly said, according to the CBS transcript of
the interview.