Lisa Van Allen is speaking out following the announcement of R. Kelly’s 30-year sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking. Image Source: IMDb

Lisa Van Allen is speaking out following the announcement of R. Kelly’s 30-year sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking.

Lisa Van Allen is one of the survivors, and she spoke to Variety in regards to the verdict that was announced, after which R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison in his racketeering and sex trafficking case on Wednesday.

After preying on young girls and boys for more than 30 years, Lisa said the sentence for the R&B artist is acceptable and that it seems appropriate that he was given the same length of time. When R. Kelly appeared in court for the child pornography case, Lisa Van Allen was one of the witnesses and said that no one paid attention and he was exonerated.

Lisa Van Allen said that she was a minor when she first met the singer on the set of a music video and later ended up being a part of a sex tape, in which she said that she was forced or pressurized to be the part, and she spoke about the same as she appeared in Lifetime’s 2019 docuseries, "Surviving R. Kelly." Surviving R. Kelly is a documentary which was shown in January 2019. The documentary placed his alleged victims in front of the camera to discuss the alleged sexual assault they suffered at the hands of the musician. It later received a Peabody award.

R. Kelly's label fired him shortly after the documentary series aired, and a month later he was legally accused of several counts of sexual assault. The singer's songs were removed from streaming sites by several musicians who had previously worked with him, including Lady Gaga. Now his survivors are talking about the verdict. 

In an interview with Variety, Lisa Van Allen stated that she is gratified to see how far they have gone since the trial in 2008 and that she is happy to have been and will continue to be a part of the solution. Lisa expressed her gratitude to everyone who heard the survivors and promised to do the same for anybody who believes they lack a platform from which to share their truth. Lisa further clarified that they are not victims but rather survivors and that their job is only just getting started.

The executive producer of the docu-series, Dream Hampton said that she is grateful to the survivors who decided to break their silence and the sentence which was announced on Wednesday must have them feeling all kinds of ways today and she hopes that the survivors know that by finding the courage to tell their stories they have helped prevent further harm. Tamra Simmons, executive producer of the docu-series also added that the sentence is much bigger than one person and it’s going to send a message to all predators out there that no matter how much money one can have or no matter how much power they think they have, they cannot go above the law.

Nine months after Kelly, 55, was found guilty by a federal jury in Brooklyn of one count of racketeering and eight Mann Act breaches, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly delivered the sentence on Wednesday. In addition, he received a $100,000 fine and five years of supervised release. Kelly, who has been detained without bond outside of New York since 2019, is accused of various offenses in Illinois and Minnesota, including severe sexual assault, child pornography, enticing a juvenile, obstructing justice, prostitution, and soliciting a minor. August is when his Chicago trial is set to start. The singer was also charged with bribery, abduction, forced labor, manufacturing child pornography, and willfully infecting some of her accusers with a sexually transmitted illness.

After the verdict was announced, survivor Lizzette Martinez said in a statement that she is grateful that the R&B singer R. Kelly will be away and not be able to harm anyone else, and added that she would never have thought that she would be here to see him be held accountable for the atrocious things that he did to children. Whereas R. Kelly's lawyer, Steve Greenberg, claimed during an interview with Law and Crime Network's Angenette Levy that the women who have accused the singer are the ones who preyed on him, for them to now come to court and say they are victims is just being intellectually dishonest. He mentioned that in this case, R. Kelly was the victim of people who wanted the situation to be in this situation.

In the interview, Steve Greenberg said that nobody had any complaints. People frequently forget this. Nobody complained until police, attorneys, and TV producers started looking for these individuals. Nobody had raised an issue. They kept their complaints to themselves. They did not voice a grievance to their relatives. They avoided making media complaints.