CHICAGO — Lanita Carter first told police and prosecutors two decades ago that R. Kelly sexually abused her. No charges were filed. She tried to move on, she said. She raised her children, she found a stable career, but Kelly’s music followed her.
“Every wedding I went to, every graduation I went to, every party,” Carter told the Tribune. When her son’s kindergarten class learned to sing Kelly’s smash hit “I Believe I Can Fly,” she had to help him rehearse.
Carter thought justice was finally catching up with Kelly in 2019, when the docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” resurrected interest in the singer’s alleged misdeeds and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx put out a request for his accusers to come forward. Carter answered the call, and this time prosecutors brought charges, filing indictments in her case as well as for the alleged abuse of three others.
