As reported in this article, singer R. Kelly – no stranger to these allegations – has most recently been accused of sexually abusing a girl since she was 14 years old. In a new documentary, several women reveal the mental, verbal, physical, and emotional abuse they suffered at his hands, including:
- Slapping, choking, and spitting on them
- Making them dress up like a schoolgirl and call him “daddy”
- Brainwashing women into a cult-like setup
- Controlling what they wore and when they could use the bathroom and phones
- “Grooming” and training them to be his “pets”
- Forcing them to have sex with him and others in a “sex dungeon”
- Forcing women to crawl on the floor and perform oral sex on other women
This sounds very similar to the non-state torture (NST) we talked about in class. NST mimics classic torture committed by governments except it is committed in the private or domestic sphere by people such as parents, spouses, guardians, neighbors, trusted adults, strangers, human traffickers, pimps, or pornographers. It differs from abuse in that the goal is not to control a person, but to destroy the person’s sense of self.
Linda MacDonald and Jeanne Sarson are two activists/nurses working to have NST identified as a violation of human rights by the United Nations. This paper from their website provides more information on the topic.
Do these allegations surrounding R. Kelly sound like non-state torture to you?