The manager, Henry James Mason, 52, of Mableton, Ga., was wanted on a warrant for terroristic threats and acts against Timothy Savage, whose daughter Joycelyn is believed to be living with Kelly. Savage told the police that after he tried to contact his daughter, Mason told him over the phone that he would do “harm” to Savage and his family and threatened to kill him.
Mason surrendered to the Henry County Sheriff’s Office, near Atlanta, and was released on $10,000 bond on Friday. In a statement released by his lawyer, Mason denied that he had “engaged in any acts of bullying, harassment, or aggressive acts.” He said he had, in fact, tried to help Timothy Savage and his wife, Jonjelyn, re-establish a relationship with their daughter.
The police report was filed last May, but a storm of controversy has surrounded Kelly in recent weeks, after “Surviving R. Kelly” aired on Lifetime. The documentary series chronicled decades of allegations against Kelly, including that he operates a so-called sex cult in which he physically and emotionally abuses women and keeps them from their families.
Timothy and Jonjelyn Savage, who both appeared in the documentary, say that Joycelyn is among those women. But Kelly’s representatives say that the women who live and travel with him are doing so voluntarily, and that he has not abused any of them. Last year, TMZ released a video in which Joycelyn said she was happy living with Kelly and was there of her own volition.
“They were perfectly consensual relationships,” Kelly’s lawyer, Steven Greenberg, said last week.
Timothy Savage said Mason’s call wasn’t the last time he was warned about speaking out against Kelly.
Savage called the police. While an officer was at the house, Russell called Savage, who put his phone on speaker so the officer could hear. Russell, the officer wrote in his report, accused Savage of giving Lifetime false information and told Savage that if he continued supporting the documentary, “that they (R. Kelly/Don) would be forced to provide information disproving Timothy” and that the information “would ruin him, his reputation, business and family, because it would show him a liar.”
The police said on Friday that detectives were reviewing the call. Russell, who has not been charged with a crime, declined to comment about the call on Friday.
Gerald A. Griggs, a lawyer who represents Timothy and Jonjelyn Savage, said on Friday that he hoped Mason’s arrest would serve as a “message to Mr. Robert Sylvester Kelly and his camp, that no one will be bullied or threatened, and we will pursue legal action against anyone who attempts to bully or threaten the Savages.”
Kelly is not facing criminal charges, but prosecutors in Atlanta and Chicago, where Kelly has had homes, began looking into accusations against him after the documentary aired.
Kelly has been dogged for years by accusations but has never been convicted of a crime. He was acquitted in Chicago on child pornography charges in 2008, in a case that involved a tape that prosecutors said showed him having sex with a 13-year-old girl. But the girl in the video did not testify and Kelly’s lawyers argued that her identity could not be proven.
He has also settled lawsuits against him going back to the 1990s. Tracy Sampson, a woman who said she was an intern at Epic Records in 1999, told Dateline in an interview to be aired Friday night that Kelly sexually abused her beginning when she was 16. She said she sued Kelly and reached a $250,000 settlement.
Mr. Greenberg told Dateline that every woman who had come forward to accuse Kelly of misconduct was lying.
The documentary, which followed years of reporting on R. Kelly’s treatment of women, led to calls for RCA, Kelly’s record company, which is a division of Sony Music Entertainment, to drop him. On Friday, RCA did just that.
via New York Times
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