R Kelly used Aaliyah as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ to normalise his sexual obsession with underage girls, Damon Dash claims
R KELLY's child bride Aaliyah was a "sacrificial lamb" in a cover-up of the R&B star's obsession with underage girls, her former boyfriend claims.
Record producer Damon Dash claimed if Aaliyah had been protected when she married Kelly aged 15, "so many other girls wouldn't have gotten touched."
Kelly was 27 when he secretly wed child singer Aaliyah in 1994 - which was widely reported at the time.
Now Dash - who set up Roc-A-Fella Records with Jay Z - blames the people who worked with Kelly and the media for brushing aside Kelly's alleged predatory behaviour.
He tells the new documentary series Surviving R Kelly Part II: "I know the whole story.
"I know it was the cover-up and all of that. But how did that cover it up?
"It just made the conversation, ‘Oh, he married a child?’ That was a headline! That was a rumour. That was something talked about like it was normal.
"It wasn’t like, ‘Ew, disgusting, you married a (15) year old.’ It was like, ‘Oh, he married Aaliyah?'"
He added: "Aaliyah was, like, the sacrificial lamb for all that because she didn’t deserve none of that
"Good soul, good girl, and wasn’t even so resentful - like, ‘Let that man live but just keep him the f*** away from me.’
"That’s all she wanted. She was just happy to be away.";
Dash was in a relationship with Aaliyah for a year until her death in a plane crash aged 22 while shooting a music video in the Bahamas in 2001.
FAKE ID PLOT
The teen star was introduced to R Kelly by her uncle aged 12 and the singer became her mentor.
Their 1994 marriage was annulled after six months. The certificate said she was 18 but in fact she was only 15.
Last month Kelly was charged with plotting to bribe an Illinois official to get her fake ID.
His former tour manager Demetrius Smith told TMZ he arranged to get the document for his boss, and that Kelly knew Aaliyah was underage.
The I Believe I Can Fly singer, now 52, denies wrongdoing.
He is awaiting trial in Chicago and Brooklyn on a string of charges including child abuse images, racketeering, kidnapping, forced labour and sexual exploitation.
Prosecutors allege he and his entourage picked out girls at concerts and groomed them for sex.
Surviving R Kelly Part II: The Reckoning follows the hit first series which highlighted a string of abuse allegations spanning decades.
The new series also features a claim by R Kelly's brother Carey that the star tried to bribe him $50,000 to take the rap for a "child sex tape".
Carey said he told his brother: "You ain't got enough money for me to say that's me. Because it ain't worth me selling my soul."
Kelly was acquitted in 2008 after jurors could not decide if the girl in the 27-minute tape was underage.