UPDATE: Nov. 26 — The Patreon page of the woman purporting to be Joycelyn Savage was removed Tuesday, after the site’s administrators were unable to verify whether the account belonged to her.
“After multiple unsuccessful attempts to verify the identity of the account holder, we closed the Patreon page allegedly associated with Joycelyn Savage due to potential impersonation,” a spokesperson for Patreon said in a statement to HuffPost. “All patrons who signed up for the membership page were refunded and the creator did not receive any funds.”
In a statement, Gerald Griggs, an attorney for Savage’s parents, who had been attempting to verify the account, said the page’s removal “underscores the family’s concern for safety of their daughter Joycelyn.”
Griggs called on “law enforcement to get involved in determining where Joycelyn is and whom is really behind the account that detailed potential crimes.”
Despite the site’s removal, Griggs reiterated that the allegations in the now-removed posts matched details previously known to him and Savage’s parents.
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After previously defending R&B singer and accused serial sexual abuser R. Kelly, Joycelyn Savage, one of Kelly’s girlfriends, now says she is a “victim” of his abuse.
“I am here to tell my story I will reveal information/secrets I’ve been sweared to not ever bring to light but I am willing to risk it all. This is my story on Mr. Kelly,” a woman purporting to be Savage wrote Saturday on the paid membership site Patreon, inviting subscribers to “see what I’ve been going through these past years.” The Patreon link was shared on Twitter and Instagram accounts that also appear to belong to Savage.
Savage did not immediately respond to a request for comment to verify her identity.
In a series of posts on Saturday and Sunday, Savage claimed Kelly physically abused her, detailing a pattern similar to that of the scores of women who have accused Kelly of sexual and physical abuse over the last two decades.
Many of them spoke out in the Lifetime documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly,” which aired in January. The series brought renewed attention to the years of allegations against Kelly, who was acquitted on charges of child pornography in a 2008 trial.
Kelly, who has denied all allegations of sexual abuse, now faces new federal charges in both Chicago and New York and is in a Chicago jail while he awaits trial.
According to Savage, she met Kelly when she was 19, and began a relationship with him under the guise of career mentorship.
“He would say it exactly like this ‘Baby girl you are going to be the next Aaliyah,’” Savage wrote in the Patreon post, referring to the late singer, whom Kelly illegally married in 1994, when she was just 15 years old. “There’s something’s about Robert & Aaliyah that I am going to reveal which everyone needs to know,” she added. “As one of his victim yes victim I’ve seen more and heard more!”
“Robert told me soo many lies my 19 year old mind believed everyone of one them,” the post continued, with Savage saying Kelly had promised to release a couple of songs she recorded in his studio, but he never did.
After moving in with Kelly in 2015, Savage said he became “so controlling” and “started giving me commands.” On at least one instance, he allegedly choked her when she didn’t address him as “Master” or “Daddy.”
“I had bruises around my neck, and I was told by him to wear a turtle necks or a scarf to cover them up whenever he would take me out in public,” Savage wrote. “I was frightened to tell anyone about this because of what he may do next.”
Over the weekend, Savage ended a two-year hiatus from social media, writing on Instagram that she plans to break a nondisclosure agreement and “post daily chapters of my story.”
“I am risking my life for many others,” she wrote.
She then directed followers to the Patreon page, where she began posting what she alleges is the true story of her relationship with Kelly, including claiming that Kelly has twice gotten her pregnant, and she had an abortion both times.
Kelly’s attorney, Steve Greenberg, denied the claims made in Savage’s posts, accusing her of seeking “her own personal profit.”
“It is unfortunate that [Joycelyn] now seeks to make money by exploiting her long time, loving relationship with Robert,” Greenberg said Saturday in a statement to Variety. “Obviously if she were to tell the truth no one would pay so she has, unfortunately, chosen to regurgitate the stories and lies told by others for her own personal profit. We know the real facts, and it was not until the money ran out that she decided anything was wrong. Hopefully people will see it for the obvious profiteering it is.”
Prior to her posts Saturday, both Savage and Kelly’s other girlfriend, Azriel Clary, had staunchly defended Kelly. Both Savage and Clary’s parents, who were featured in “Surviving R. Kelly,” have repeatedly said they believe Kelly “brainwashed” their daughters.
Gerald Griggs, the Savage family’s attorney, told local news outlet 11 Alive in Atlanta Saturday he is “85 to 90% confident that this is her account,” and cited Greenberg’s statement responding to her allegations.
“Joycelyn Savage — or someone purporting to be Joycelyn Savage — has gone on social media and made several statements distancing herself from Robert Sylvester Kelly and confirming certain facts that we already knew was true with regard to their relationship,” he said. “We are appreciative that certain facts have been confirmed that we knew for the last two and a half years that she was, in fact, a victim, and that she is, in fact, trying to reach out and get her story out.”
In one post, Savage wrote that Kelly “always had a fetish for pissing on his girls/woman. While he would piss on us he would make us swallow his piss and if we threw up piss would turn into feces. I’ve been peed on numerous of times.”
A tape of Kelly urinating on a minor while sexually assaulting her was at the center of the 2008 trial.
In her posts, Savage also writes about Kelly alleging employing assistants to monitor her behavior, and being told what to say when speaking with her parents on the phone. Some of Kelly’s other accusers have told similar stories of Kelly controlling their every movement, such as eating and using the bathroom.
“Why would someone claim to love keep me locked up like some damn animal,” Savage wrote in one of the posts.
Savage and Clary previously defended Kelly in an interview with CBS host Gayle King in March, describing themselves as being in a live-in relationship with Kelly. Savage claimed “our parents are basically out here trying to get money and scam.”
The interview was taped the same day a belligerent Kelly infamously lashed out at King while vehemently denying the serial sexual abuse claims.
According to King, while Savage and Clary spoke with her, Kelly stood off-camera, interjecting with coughs and attempts to cut off the conversation.
Savage also defended Kelly in a 2017 TMZ video. In her post Sunday, she claimed Kelly and his assistants forced her to record the video.
“What you see in any of my interviews is just a split second of what we are allowed to speak on,” she wrote. “You don’t know that we are scripted.”
According to Savage, Kelly “always would say ‘All this can stop today, you want a career? Or do you want to live a normal life,’” she wrote, “basically trying to make me do what he wants.”
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
This story has been updated to note the Patreon page’s removal.