damning reports on the singer<\/a> that helped launch the first child pornography case against Kelly. (Kelly was acquitted in the first trial.) And yet, she\u2019s never publicly told her story until now. \u201cThere was no logic in the now. It was just my final chapter of letting this situation go, releasing myself of it, my family, and not having to play in the shadows of Robert any longer,\u201d Landfair explains. \u201cI just really wanted to capture the fact that I was a human being. I had dreams and aspirations. I was not just the \u2018R. Kelly girl.’\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tIn a statement provided to Rolling Stone on behalf of Kelly, the singer\u2019s attorney, Beau Brindley, says that \u201cMr. Kelly wishes Ms. Landfair all the best in life.\u201d \u201cAt a young age, Ms. Landfair was unfairly forced into the public eye against her will by people that were intent on destroying the reputation of R. Kelly. She did not deserve that,\u201d Brindley adds. \u201cMr. Kelly has no negative comments to make about her. He hopes she finds success and peace.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tSo where does Landfair want to start? At the beginning.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce I realized that I didn\u2019t have peace or privacy [by hiding], I had to take ownership.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAN EARLY SCENE IN LANDFAIR\u2019S BOOK begins with her eavesdropping on a conversation among older family members in her grandparents\u2019 home. \u201cR. Kelly has made us his family. And I\u2019m grateful!\u201d Landfair recalls her mother declaring. \u201cThat\u2019s God! I don\u2019t care what nobody says!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIf the whispers of Kelly\u2019s proclivity for young girls reached the Landfairs at that time, it would have been easy to wave them off, as so many did, as salacious and unfounded gossip. \u201cI thought he was safe,\u201d Landfair explains. \u201cThe way he presented himself to people, especially my parents. They thought he was safe.\u201d At the time, Kelly was putting distance between his \u201cBump N\u2019 Grind\u201d persona by embracing gospel music, releasing the soulful \u201cI Believe I Can Fly\u201d and publicly devoting his life to Christ. In reality, he was a wolf in sheep\u2019s clothing, with a cross around his neck.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tKelly entered the Landfairs\u2019 lives through Reshona\u2019s aunt Sparkle after he took the newcomer R&B singer under his wing as his prot\u00e9g\u00e9e. It marked the start of Kelly\u2019s growing influence over the wider Landfair family. He subtly zeroed in on a young Reshona after meeting at a 4 the Cause performance, taking an interest in her hobbies while simultaneously ingratiating himself into her family\u2019s life. He courted the family\u2019s trust with generosity and opportunity. An impromptu meal at the Cheesecake Factory was the multi-millionaire\u2019s treat. Landfair\u2019s father, Greg, was offered steady work as a studio musician for Kelly, credited on nearly a dozen Kelly tracks from 1999 to 2010.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tExcited and awed by Kelly\u2019s celebrity, a 12-year-old Landfair began spending more time around Kelly at his recording studio and tagging along to group outings with Sparkle. When Sparkle encouraged Landfair to ask Kelly to be her godfather, it seemed like a natural progression of the close bond the family was developing with Kelly. After Landfair climbed into Kelly\u2019s lap and rubbed his head \u2014 following the precise instructions Sparkle had given her \u2014 Kelly eagerly accepted her innocent request.<\/p>\n
\n\tThough her parents tried their best, Landfair writes, she says they stood no chance against Kelly, a master manipulator who methodically groomed figures in Landfair\u2019s life before he turned his focus and true intentions on her. Under the noses of her family, Kelly\u2019s business team, and the revolving door of yes-people in his recording studio and homes, the book details how Kelly stealthily groomed the middle-schooler in plain sight. It started with secret, sexually charged phone calls and insisting that Landfair call him \u201cDaddy\u201d in private moments. Landfair says she initially thought of Kelly as her boyfriend, though as the abuse escalated, the term paled when trying to label the all-encompassing role Kelly played in her life. \u201cHe was always \u2018Daddy,\u2019\u201d she says. He slowly pushed her boundaries, Landfair writes, played mind games, and convinced the teen they were desperately in love.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-rollingstone-2022\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\")
<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cRobert knowingly victimized me as a child. I was brainwashed by Robert and a sex slave,\u201d Landfair writes. \u201cRobert made me suicidal as a young adult. It is awful being me. I gave up my family for him. Nothing else mattered back then. And I still don\u2019t know why \u2026 by the time I was 16, 17 years of age, the only thing that mattered was him. I was manipulated, and independence didn\u2019t seem like an option. Robert shattered me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe role Landfair\u2019s family members, including Sparkle, played in fostering her relationship with Kelly, even as whispers of their relationship became screams, is difficult to reckon with. Landfair does not excuse her family\u2019s decisions; instead, she contextualizes them, laying out a dangerous combination of willful ignorance, financial dependence, and shame. \u201cI think the first stages of my parents was utter, naive denial,\u201d Landfair says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThere were points Landfair wishes her parents could have had the discernment to intervene. In one passage, she writes about her father praying over her, rebuking \u201cevery spirit of perversion and deception\u201d that their family might encounter, not yet knowing it had already arrived at their doorstep. \u201cI wish your intuition had kicked in when I seemed uncomfortable and would refuse to speak to or even acknowledge any man who was not you or Robert,\u201d Landfair writes. \u201cI wish you had been suspicious enough to catch Robert in the act of making sneaky sexual gestures toward me while I fidgeted, unable to respond and afraid someone might see.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBy the late 1990s, Sparkle began ringing the alarm bell. \u201cYour Aunt Stephanie has been in touch with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services,\u201d Landfair writes of her parents confronting her for the first time about her relationship with Kelly. \u201cThey\u2019ve launched an investigation. Seems she thinks you may be involved in some indecent sexual activity at Robert\u2019s studio and that it\u2019s with Robert. What do you have to say about that?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tKelly had been preparing her for this moment. Landfair describes in the book the extensive coaching he\u2019d put her through, drilling her like a military sergeant until she could smoothly lie about aspects of their relationship. \u201cIt was long days of rehearsals, it was long days of grooming,\u201d she says. \u201cIt was until you got it right. Until he felt like you could walk out the door and represent it the way he translated it. It would take that long.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tHer parents accepted Landfair\u2019s rehearsed denial. But when given undeniable proof of Landfair\u2019s relationship with Kelly a few years later with the emergence of the videotape, they were in a nightmare scenario. Both Kelly and Landfair were adamant about their love, and a 17-year-old Landfair was so deep under her abuser\u2019s spell that her parents had no hope of successfully luring her away from Kelly. Instead, they knuckled down and tolerated the situation, which neither parent fully understood the scope and depravity of.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI\u2019m not saying my parents did not have shortcomings,\u201d Landfair says. \u201cHowever, if you weren\u2019t the parent of a Reshona and in that position to have to choose \u2026 my dad did not want to be the person that we saw on Lifetime, banging on windows and throwing rocks and trying to get his daughter back. He was my security blanket, if you want me to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just really wanted to capture the fact that I was a human being. I had dreams and aspirations. I was not just the \u2018R. Kelly girl.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhatever protection her parents tried to offer existed inside a reality Kelly controlled. As Landfair details in the book for the first time, the years between 2002 \u2013 when Kelly was arrested on a 21-count indictment pertaining to child pornography charges \u2013 and his 2008 acquittal were spent under a fog, with Kelly keeping Landfair under his thumb even more than before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the book, Landfair likens the isolating period to being under house arrest, though that\u2019s arguably too forgiving a description given the hostage-like conditions she writes about living under. Paranoid that Landfair might turn on him, Kelly tightly controlled who she could see. He\u00a0 bounced Landfair between various locations, including his tour bus, recording studios, and cramped office spaces. \u201cNone of which were bedrooms,\u201d Landfair clarifies. \u201cThere were times where I would be sleeping on a chiropractor table. There were times when I would be sleeping in the closet.\u201d Kelly\u2019s lackeys dropped off meals, often delivered with a specific code knock on the door. Even going to the bathroom required Kelly\u2019s or someone else\u2019s approval.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tAnd yet, despite the supposed secrecy of her whereabouts, Landfair was never truly hidden. Kelly would host parties at these spaces, and a confined Landfair would listen from wherever she was being kept. Her father would secretly steal away and knock on her door. \u201cEveryone knew how he operated, so it feels worse than what he made it look,\u201d Landfair explains. \u201cYou might see me in a different space or [Kelly] might have me come out, so that it looks a little bit more normal, but I\u2019m living in the garage where the gym is built at a point. I\u2019m living in the office space in the house with just a couch and a little handy chair. I\u2019m just listening to music, I\u2019m sitting at a desk, I\u2019m in here really pretending, trying to figure out if it\u2019s daylight, if it\u2019s sunlight.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tNot testifying in the 2008 trial has left Landfair with obvious regrets. Succumbing to Kelly\u2019s demands, sick with shame, and fearful that she\u2019d be the person held responsible for sending Kelly to prison, Landfair swore under oath to a grand jury that the girl in the video wasn\u2019t her. As Kelly\u2019s team weaponized Landfair\u2019s refusal to testify, she writes that she was just outside the courthouse, kept in a bedroom on Kelly\u2019s parked tour bus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t have the TV on, of course,\u201d Landfair writes of her spending her time in the small space aimlessly waiting for Kelly. \u201cRobert wouldn\u2019t let me follow the trial, just like he\u2019d forbidden me from watching his televised BET interview with Ed Gordon or listening to his radio interviews since his indictment six years before. I wasn\u2019t allowed to watch, listen to, or read anything that could make me question things: not the news or trending social media stories. So, even though I was two hundred feet from Robert, I might as well have been two thousand miles away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tAlthough more than a dozen witnesses, including some of Landfair\u2019s relatives and friends,\u00a0 testified that it was her on the \u201chateful\u201d tape, jurors would cite her looming absence as a major factor in acquitting Kelly. (Three of Landfair\u2019s relatives testified in Kelly\u2019s defense, claiming they didn\u2019t recognize the girl on the tape as Landfair.) Nearly 20 years later, it still weighs heavily on Landfair. \u201cI must live with the choices my parents and I made, and with Robert\u2019s abuse of other women and girls who met him after he was acquitted,\u201d Landfair writes. \u201cI\u2019m not saying we did the right thing. And I regret that so many more people were hurt by Robert because he wasn\u2019t stopped in 2008.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tLandfair likens Kelly\u2019s control over her life and decisions to \u201cbrainwashing.\u201d His wants suddenly became her desires, too. The weight of Kelly\u2019s control over Landfair\u2019s life was absolute. She sacrificed everything for him. Tears spring to her eyes when asked if she had regrets about quitting 4 the Cause at Kelly\u2019s behest. \u201cThat was the last part of me that went; that was the last thing I had,\u201d she says. \u201cSchool was already done, I was not doing basketball anymore, not going to proms, so 4 the Cause was the last thing to go. That was the one thing that was good about me that I could always resort to, and it was a tug of war. That was probably the first time I can remember challenging him, because I did not want to do that.\u201d Being in the studio to record the audiobook version of her memoir brought that dormant spark back to life. \u201cI definitely miss music,\u201d Landfair says. \u201cI don\u2019t know where I would fit into it at this point, but I do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\n\tBY THE TIME LANDFAIR was 26 years old, she had managed to untangle herself from Kelly\u2019s grip, though there were strings like his limited financial support still attached. Then there was the fear. Landfair remained paranoid that any new friends or colleagues would recognize her name and whisper behind her back about the unnamed trauma she was just beginning to unpack.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWith every job I applied for, friend I made, and date I went on, I was always plagued with worry,\u201d she writes. \u201cDid they know? Would they judge me? I was tired of living in the shadow of Robert\u2019s secret that had become mine. I had to purge.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen the Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly premiered in January 2019, she was blindsided. She had only heard fleeting talk of some project in the weeks leading up to a trailer dropping online. Seeing Sparkle cry about Landfair\u2019s experience \u2014 something that Landfair hadn\u2019t fully come to terms with \u2014 was discombobulating and infuriating.<\/p>\n
\n\tIn a state of panic, Landfair admits she reached out to Kelly for answers, only to receive sneers and deflection. She was more taken aback by the response from Derrel McDavid, Kelly\u2019s longtime business manager and accountant. \u201cDon\u2019t hurt him,\u201d McDavid reportedly begged her. \u201cDon\u2019t hurt Robert. I know there were a lot of things that happened that, you know, shouldn\u2019t have or that could have been avoided. But don\u2019t hurt him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe irony of McDavid\u2019s plea to Landfair was astounding. This was the same man who was accused of helping coordinate payoffs to Kelly\u2019s accusers ahead of the 2008 trial. He had served as a mediator in a meeting between Kelly and Landfair\u2019s father, where the singer confessed to secretly having a relationship with an underage Landfair for the past three-plus years. Don\u2019t hurt Kelly? What about the hurt already caused to her? \u201cNobody ever considered me,\u201d Landfair says matter-of-factly. \u201cRobert was the more valuable person in the equation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThere are only a few moments during the 90-minute conversation when Landfair becomes emotional: Discussing memories of her father, who died in 2021, a year-long estrangement from her mother mandated by Kelly, and mourning having to walk away from her early music career. When the topic turns to the 2008 criminal trial, her tears come hot and fast. Her voice cracks in pain, anger, and heartbreak at how thoroughly the system and those around her failed her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tReshona Landfair in Chicago, January 2026.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAkilah Townsend for Rolling Stone<\/p>\n
\n\tIn hindsight, it\u2019s unfathomable how widely unprotected Landfair was. Community-held stigmas around Black girls being \u201ctoo fast\u201d or \u201cfoolish\u201d when predatory older men took advantage of their innocence made Landfair believe Kelly\u2019s pedophilia was something she was responsible for, keeping her silent. When bootlegged videotapes of her abuse were being sold on street corners for $10 a copy. When national newspapers bypassed the now-standard journalistic standards not to disclose the names of sexual abuse victims or minors and used her full name \u2014 often misspelled \u2014 in their reports. And when Chicago\u2019s Cook County prosecutors failed to protect Landfair as a victim, choosing to show her face in open court as they played the explicit and degrading 26-minute tape numerous times.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIf I were a Caucasian girl who got peed on, there would have been a different outcome. Everybody would have looked at things completely different,\u201d Landfair says. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have been no showing her body in a courtroom. It wouldn\u2019t have been the skits and being the mockery of the town \u2026. I\u2019m not here to pull a race card or anything like that. I\u2019m just speaking from my heart. And Black girls, we develop fast. We\u2019re a little bit curvier, we wear our hair differently, and that becomes our fault if something like this happens. For so long, \u2026I believed it was something I did. The entire time, nobody treated me the way I was supposed to be treated. To the public, I was a mockery. I was never a victim, so I never saw myself as a victim.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tBut when Kelly was indicted again in 2019, Landfair was ready. Testifying under a Jane Doe pseudonym at the Chicago trial in August 2022, Landfair willed herself to look directly at Kelly. \u201cHe gave me a nasty look,\u201d Landfair recalls, still in slight disbelief. \u201cWhen he gave me that look, it was confirmation that I was sitting in the right place. I felt like, \u2018the nerve of you to hear all of these things that you have taken somebody through, and for you to still feel like I owe you something, or I\u2019m disloyal? \u2026That\u2019s what made it easy for me, because I\u2019m like, \u2018You don\u2019t get it. You think you\u2019re untouchable. You\u2019re still lying.\u2019<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI pray that now that he\u2019s had some time to think, that he sees his actions as wrong,\u201d Landfair adds. \u201cI really think that, in his mind, he\u2019s looking at it like, \u201cYou wanted me to do this. You allowed me to do that. I didn\u2019t force you.\u2019 Well, actually, you did.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody ever considered me. Robert was the more valuable person in the equation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tCHICAGO WAS KELLY\u2019S UNCHECKED playground. He was a local hero, one of the most successful artists to emerge from the city at a time when only icons like Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield, Nat King Cole, Quincy Jones, and Chaka Khan rivaled him in fame and accolades. Kelly firmly rooted himself in the community. He could be spotted playing pick-up basketball, attending local high school games, or just hanging out with his entourage at the Rock \u2018N\u2019 Roll McDonald\u2019s. And even now, four years after juries across two states confirmed the testimonies from survivors by finding Kelly guilty on a range of heinous charges, Kelly\u2019s presence looms over his hometown.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tMinutes before my interview with Landfair, a Lyft driver pulls up to an icy curb to take me to the studio where we are scheduled to meet. Kelly\u2019s 2000 song \u201cBad Man\u201d confronted me as I buckled myself into the rear seat. As Kelly belted out the chorus, the oblivious driver made easy conversation about his lunch plans, calling in a hibachi order mid-ride. The song wasn\u2019t an intentional choice; it was part of the Chicago-themed playlist pumping from the radio system, but the casualness of Kelly\u2019s music still being part of people\u2019s everyday lives was a jolting wake-up call for someone who was passing through.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tLandfair is unfazed when I mention the interaction. Instead, she nods knowingly. \u201cIt\u2019s everywhere I go,\u201d she says. \u201cI work in a high school, and when I walk into work every morning, R. Kelly is playing on a loudspeaker before I get my day started. I just go into my little shell, and eventually it passes. That\u2019s just how I handle it.\u201d Landfair understands fans who can\u2019t easily write off Kelly\u2019s music in the wake of his conviction. \u201cThe music itself is his gift,\u201d she explains. \u201cThat\u2019s the good part of him. That\u2019s the creative side of him. So, I can\u2019t take away a fan\u2019s memory of what they felt when that song came out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThere have been moments when Landfair contemplated moving away from Chicago, putting physical distance between a city that still openly supports Kelly and is ground zero for some of her most painful memories. For now, she\u2019s firmly planted in a place she genuinely loves. It\u2019s where she was born and raised. It\u2019s where her family is. It\u2019s the home she\u2019s created for herself and her son. Why let Kelly claim anything else in her life? \u201cI\u2019m still here,\u201d she says. \u201cI still walk with my head held high.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tIn the years after removing herself from Kelly\u2019s orbit, Landfair has rebuilt her life. She lights up while highlighting her job at a school-based health center, and describing the next steps for the non-profit she founded, Project Refine, a mentor program for young women. \u201cThis is the beginning of my freedom officially,\u201d Landfair exhales. \u201cThrough this book, I feel like I\u2019m a channel. I\u2019m looking forward to sharing my healing process and my testimony and letting that be freeing for somebody else.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tThe nerves that Landfair had been suppressing only show as the interview winds down, letting out a relieved and shaky breath after answering the last question. It\u2019s been a long, hard-fought road to where she feels emboldened to step past the shame and self-blame of being in Kelly\u2019s shadow. \u201cI was afraid to say my own name and be who I really was to work, to friends,\u201d she says. \u201cI created Chon, and that\u2019s what I\u2019ve been going by.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tShe doesn\u2019t hesitate as she continues her train of thought, though a smile creeps into her voice. \u201cBut,\u201d Landfair adds, \u201cI\u2019m here today as Reshona.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Y ou shouldn\u2019t know Reshona Landfair\u2019s name.\u00a0 It may have rung a bell in the 1990s if you…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":441532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2160,28037,88,145147,29368],"class_list":["post-441531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-controversy","tag-courts-and-crime","tag-entertainment","tag-r-kelly","tag-sexual-abuse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}