Warning: The accounts of sexual abuse detailed in this article could be triggering for women who have been victims of abuse.
As we reported earlier this week, the federal sex trafficking and racketeering trial of R. Kelly has begun in New York, and it is a painful and triggering circus. To look at the decades of abuse of one man, and the extensive network of people who aided and abetted him, either knowingly or unknowingly, paints a sinister portrait of both the allowances of fame and the conditions of the patriarchy. It has taken so long for his victims to get a chance at real justice, and like in other high profile sexual assault cases, the process is a re-traumatizing dragging out of old wounds.
