High-profile attorney Gloria Allred announced Sunday that she is representing a man who says he found a VHS tape of singer R. Kelly sexually abusing underage girls, the latest alleged tape of the singer to surface in recent weeks.
Gary Dennis, seated between Allred and his wife at a press conference, read a statement in which he said he had discovered the tape while cleaning out an old box in his Pennsylvania home.
He said the tape had R. Kelly’s name on it and that he watched it assuming it featured footage from a concert. Instead, he said, he saw someone who appeared to be R. Kelly “sexually abusing underage African-American girls.”
“He was telling them what to do and what to say and it appeared that he was in control of the camera,” said Dennis, a nursing home worker. “I was disgusted as I am today and horrified when I saw that. I have a daughter and nobody’s daughter should ever be subjected to anything like that.”
Dennis said he and his wife reached out to Allred for help transferring the tape to law enforcement officials. He said he does not personally know R. Kelly, whose given name is Robert Kelly, and that he wasn’t sure how the tape came to be in his possession, according to Allred.
Allred said she had given the tape to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York and that she believed the federal court had jurisdiction over it. She would not elaborate on where the tape was believed to have been recorded or what sexual acts were depicted.
“R. Kelly denies that he is on any tape with underaged girls,” Kelly’s attorney, Steve Greenberg, told HuffPost in a statement. “It is obviously now just open season on R. Kelly. It is irresponsible to continue to take the speculation of every Tom, Dick and Harry, and report it as if it is fact.”
Kelly has for decades been the subject of numerous sexual abuse allegations, many involving underage girls. He has been in and out of jail in recent weeks due to charges of criminal sexual abuse and missed child support payments. He has consistently denied the sexual abuse allegations against him.
Michael Avenatti, the attorney best known for representing Stormy Daniels, said last month that he had handed over at least two VHS tapes allegedly showing Kelly sexually abusing minors to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office in Chicago.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx charged Kelly last month with 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four victims. All but one were under 17 at the time of the alleged incidents, which occurred between 1998 and 2010.
Kelly was indicted in 2002 on 13 counts of child pornography but was acquitted in 2008. Sexual abuse allegations against Kelly were revived when BuzzFeed published an explosive report in 2017 that alleged the singer operated an abusive sex cult. In January, Lifetime debuted the six-part docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly,” in which several women said the musician had abused them.
Dennis said he has heard there are many tapes that depict Kelly sexually abusing underage girls and urged anyone in possession of such a tape to contact Allred immediately.
“I can’t get the memory out of my head,” Dennis said of the alleged sexual abuse committed by Kelly on the video. “What the children were subjected to do on the tape is sickening and shameful and most of all harmful to those children.”