The reckoning of R Kelly continues with another important docuseries

Accused on multiple accounts of sexual abuse of black girls and women, and misconduct in a Chicago correctional center, R Kelly awaits his 2020 trial. Leading up to that and following the bone-chilling documentary series Surviving R Kelly, which aired earlier this year and caused worldwide outrage, Lifetime channel is unravelling more to the saga with Surviving R Kelly Part II: The Reckoning, airing every Sunday, starting January 26 2020.

Producer Dream Hampton’s six-hour series will run for two hours a night for three consecutive nights.

Surviving R Kelly tracks the growth of a predator who targeted and solicited black girls – which is what many of them were when they were first approached by Kelly.

The continuation features interviews from a variety of perspectives including new survivors, supporters, music industry insiders like Damon Dash, Mathew Knowles, Jimmy Maynes, activist Tarana Burke – who is the #MeToo founder – and many others such as State Attorney for Cook County Kimberly M Foxx.

The release of Surviving R Kelly earlier this year triggered many viewers across the globe to finally listen to the survivors and victims of sexual assault who came forward.

The groundbreaking Emmy nominated, Critic’s Choice Award and MTV Award winning explosive documentary series included the voices of 50 of the singer’s alleged victims and survivors who claimed Kelly sexually and physically abused them and their families.

Much has transpired since the six-part docuseries aired with a global viewership of 26 million according to US media.

Protests asking the music industry to #MuteRKelly led to American label RCA Records dropping the singer in January.

We’ve ultimately been bearing witness to the progression of how society treats cases of gender-based violence and the victims after they have come forward, who in this case are black girls and woman.

The toxic nature of our patriarchal society is that without physical proof we don’t believe women, and even with it there are still many challenges towards justice. Victim-blaming and giving the survivors a life of hell once they finally do have the courage to bring their trauma forward, especially to a court of law, becomes pass-and-parcel.

The popular R&B singer has been accused of misconduct and abuse since the early 1990s, and is now being tried for multiple counts of sexual assault. R Kelly is currently facing federal and state charges in the United States and has also been indicted with 18 federal charges, including allegedly taking underage girls across state lines for sex.

To say the mastery of being a sexual predator has been exceeded by 52 year-old Kelly throughout his career as a sex icon, is an understatement.

According to the US publication Essence, “separate federal indictments were filed in both Chicago and Brooklyn, including child pornography charges, enticement of a minor, obstruction of justice, racketeering, transporting underage girls for sex, and sexual exploitation of a child”.

The disturbing retelling of what happened in the Kelly compound and on his tours, and victims coming forward, the fact that there are parts of society that still believe the girls and their parents are to blame is immensely articulate of society’s pervasive perpetuation of misogynoir, a term that speaks to the anti-black misogyny that black womxn experience.

Women describe their journey of assault and abuse, from being coerced into sexual acts with Kelly, to surviving the toxic psychological manipulation in which he enrobed the young girls.

“Fully reckoning with Kelly’s behaviour requires our society to interrogate the problematic ways that we uphold masculinity,” says Moya Bailey on discussing R Kelly, misogynoir and protecting masculinity in an article on the American independent publication Bitch Media.

This very masculinity has afforded privileges that include the disproportionate power dynamics that flourish between an older man who is extremely famous and loved by the very same people he preys on, black girls and woman. There is no interrogation of that power and the abuse of it.

“The fact remains that masculinity affords men a certain licence of freedom when it comes to girls.”

Revealing a truth that makes so many uncomfortable to talk about, has happened explicitly in the Lifetime docuseries.

The fact that the accused who has also pleaded guilty on a number of accounts is still alive deeming him able to claim his innocence, who also seems to be unrepentant and disillusioned, is pivotal. It has reshaped how Hollywood television is used to do more than just sharing a story.

The aim is justice as well as the reconfiguration of societal views of sexual abuse and how we support the victims from the point that they tell their story until accountability is taken. This rarely happens and is a reason why many survivors do not come forward.

This is why Surviving R Kelly is so important. In South Africa media coverage on missing girls spiked this year. In the US, Feminista Jones writes that they rarely hear about missing black girls by media outlets, and when it goes reported they are described in a way to demean them stripping away humanity and innocence.

We’re now being forced to have these disturbing but very real conversations in our homes, where incidences of sexual assault and violence are experienced and remain unspoken about. It’s a sad reality that it took a docuseries about our auntie’s favourite wedding song creator to have these harrowing conversations but at least we are here, now what’s next?

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