Andrea Kelly, ex-wife of R&B musician R. Kelly, recently sat down with The View to discuss the years she spent married to the Grammy Award-winning artist, who has since faced numerous accusations of sexual misconduct. As ABC News reports, Andrea Kelly said that the musician physically abused her, including times he allegedly left her hog-tied in bed and attacked her in the back of a vehicle.
“I thought I was gonna die,” she said on The View. “I said ‘Robert, you’re going to kill me. I can’t breathe.’ I just thought, ‘Oh, my God. I’m going to die in the back of this Hummer.'”
Discussing the time he allegedly hog-tied her to the bed and left her there, she said, “He had his knee in my back and he took both of my arms around me, tied them, and then attached my legs to my arms. He hogtied me and left me on the side of the bed and he actually fell asleep, and that’s the only way I got away.”
Andrea Kelly also said that she eventually filed for divorce after attempting to commit suicide. “I wen’t out on the balcony and I climbed up…One foot was on the railing and the other was on the wall…I looked down and God allowed me to see myself laying in blood,” she said. “That was my darkest moment…The fact that I was willing to leave [my children] let me known the best thing you have to do for you and your children to live is leave.”
Asked why she’s choosing to speak up now 10 years after the divorce, Andrea said that she was inspired by others coming forward with similar stories about her ex-husband. “Some of the things [another victim] had described in detail, I had been through, I mean, verbatim,” she said. “It’s about saving lives.”
The View said that R. Kelly’s management team had no comment about Andrea Kelly’s allegations. R. Kelly released a 19-minute song this summer titled “I Admit” where he responds to numerous allegations in a defensive rant. His music is no longer being actively promoted on platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, and Pandora, and his performance at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theatre was cancelled after public outcry. Watch Andrea Kelly’s interview with The View below and revisit our interview with one of Kelly’s victims on what happened after her difficult story went public in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
