By Anita Bennett, Deadline
R. Kelly is a free man after paying more than $161,000 in back child support.
The singer was photographed leaving jail Saturday afternoon wearing a gray sweatshirt, red coat, and blue pants. Accompanied by his attorney, Steve Greenberg, Kelly stopped to talk to a crowd of reporters and photographers.
“I promise you, we’re going to straighten all this stuff out,” he said but refused to elaborate on exactly what “stuff” he was talking about.
The embattled singer was taken into custody on March 6, following a hearing in Chicago for failing to pay his ex-wife, Andrea Kelly, overdue child support by a court-ordered deadline. The two were married for 13 years and have three children together.
The Grammy winner’s arrest came just hours after he appeared in an explosive interview with CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King.
“I have been assassinated. I have been buried alive,” he said while denying allegations by Chicago prosecutors that he sexually abused four females, including three underage girls. Last month the 52-year-old performer spent three days in jail after he was arrested on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in the case.
In the interview with CBS, Kelly insisted he was innocent of the charges and said his accusers are liars.
Later in the interview, when asked about owing back child support, the singer admitted he was struggling financially.
“How can I pay child support? How, if my ex-wife is destroying my name and I can’t work?” he said. “How can I work? How can I get paid? How can I take care of my kids? How?”
The singer added that his fortune had dwindled over the years but insisted it wasn’t from paying settlements to accusers. Instead, he claimed others “connected” to his bank account had stolen the money he earned after selling tens of millions of records.
“So many people have been stealin’ my money,” he stated.
Kelly told King he always left the handling of his finances to others. But he said a few weeks earlier, he went to a Bank of America by himself — for the first time — and a teller informed him he was down to about $350,000 in his account. He claimed he had the teller move the money to a new account to protect himself.
This article originally appeared in Deadline.
