R. Kelly silenced Aaliyah and her family with NDA following marriage annulment

On Monday (Jan. 2), Lifetime premiered the final installment of “Surviving R. Kelly,” a docuseries centered around sexual abuse allegations against incarcerated musician R. Kelly. In the episode, multiple sources revealed that Aaliyah’s family signed an NDA with the disgraced artist following his and the late singer’s marriage annulment. According to reports, the family agreed to remain silent about the situation in exchange for the rights to Kelly’s first three albums.

As previously reported by REVOLT, Kelly and Aaliyah entered into an illegal union in 1994 when she was 15 and he was 27. Her parents ended the relationship the following year.

Today, Kelly is serving a 30-year sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking charges that were handed down to him during his highly publicized 2021 federal trial in New York. During her opening statements as part of the prosecution, Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Maria Cruz Melendez claimed that the aforementioned marriage took place because of an alleged pregnancy:

“One night in 1994, while the defendant was on tour, he got some news about Aaliyah. She thought that she was pregnant. This, of course, was a huge problem for him. Why? Because at the time Aaliyah was only 15 years old and if she was pregnant, that meant that there would be questions, a lot of questions. At the very top of that list of questions would be, ‘Who is the father of that baby?'”

She continued: “So, the defendant and his circle came up with a plan… The defendant decided that he needed to marry Aaliyah … In other words, if she’s his wife, then she can’t testify against him, or so he thought.”

The related news, Kelly was convicted on three counts of child pornography and three counts of enticing a minor after last year’s legal proceedings in Illinois. He’ll receive his sentence for that Feb. 23.