Deborah Cox: R Kelly 'Needs To Be Held Accountable'
JOHN R KENNEDY
Wednesday, January 16th 2019 - 3:05 pm
Deborah Cox said Wednesday it was an easy decision to speak up against R Kelly in the wake of recent allegations of sexual misconduct.
“I just felt like it’s my duty,” explained Cox, on the phone from her home in Miami.
Since the Lifetime docu-series
Surviving R Kelly aired, the Canadian singer has been
tweeting messages like “What he did and is STILL doing is pure EVIL” and “He needs to be held accountable for the horrible acts with ALL of those underage girls.”
Cox explained: ”I’m a woman in this industry. I have to show the women that are coming up who want a career that they can still conduct themselves as a smart person without having to succumb to the predators.
“At the same time I have a son who I have to teach that certain conduct is not acceptable when you’re dealing with girls.”
MORE:
Deborah Cox Spreading Canadian Kindness In America
Cox, who is also raising two daughters, said she was infuriated watching
Surviving R Kelly.
“It just really hit me to my core. I don’t like predators. I don’t like people that prey on the young and the innocent,” she explained. “And he knowingly did that repeatedly over so many years and got a pass from the industry.”
Kelly has, through his lawyer, denied the allegations in the docu-series.
Cox said she didn’t want to go on a Twitter rant. “I did want my voice and my perspective to be heard and I wanted people to know what side I was on,” she said. “I wanted people to know where I stood on that.”
This week, Céline Dion’s management instructed Sony Music
to remove her duet with Kelly, “I’m Your Angel,” from streaming platforms. As it happens, the song topped the
Billboard Hot 100 for the last four weeks of 1988 and kept Cox’s hit “Nobody’s Supposed to be Here” at No. 2.