R. Kelly Claimed It Was Aaliyah’s Idea To Get Married When She Was 15

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According to R. Kelly’s latest psychiatric evaluation, he claimed that it wasn’t his idea to marry Aaliyah. The convicted sex trafficker told clinical assistant professor of Harvard Medical School, Renee Sorrentino that it was Aaliyah who wanted to tie the knot. Aaliyah was 15-years-old at the time, Radar Online reported.

Kelly and Aaliyah married on Aug. 31, 1994. During his Brooklyn trial, it was proven that someone from his team bribed a government official in order to get a fake ID for the teenager.

[Kelly] and others bribed a government employee to create false identification for [Aaliyah],” the indictment read. “Witnesses have advised the government that [Kelly] engaged in this bribery scheme to obtain a marriage license so he could quickly and secretly marry [Aaliyah] to avoid criminal charges for engaging in a sexual relationship with [Aaliyah] who was a minor at the time.”

Kelly had hopes that this evaluation would lead to him getting a lenient sentence but that didn’t work. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison for racketeering, sex crimes, violating the Mann Act, bribery and more.

R. Kelly met Aaliyah through her uncle Barry Hankerson, her then account manager. After their introduction, Kelly worked on Aaliyah’s music for two years. In the evaluation, he said Aaliyah’s mother, Diane Haughton, would often come with her to their studio sessions. Haughton and Kelly later had conflict but what they disagreed over wasn’t disclosed. Kelly claimed that Aaliyah wanted to go with Kelly to Chicago to continue to work on music. Haughton forbade her from going but Aaliyah still went.

Since she came to Chicago, Kelly “described feeling like he was in trouble because she was already in Chicago, which was against her parent’s wishes.”

He told Sorrentino that they got married after he made a deal with her.

“He told her if they married, she had to go home,” the evaluation stated. “They married in a hotel in Chicago. She then went home.”

Their marriage was annulled less than a week later.

Aaliyah’s family, with the exception of Hankerson, remained quiet after these allegations against Kelly came back into the spotlight.