A woman who interned for Epic Records in 1999 is speaking on camera for the first time about allegations she and R. Kelly engaged in a sexual relationship when she was 16.
In an interview with Dateline set to air Friday night, Tracy Sampson—now 36—recalled the alleged sexual abuse. "I was like 'No,' to which he responded, 'Well, give me a hug' and then, like, when I gave him a hug he just started kissing me," she said of the moment Kelly first forcibly kissed her.
Sampson, who said that she felt she was "in love with him" at one point, added that she "didn't know what to do" and was unsure if this kind of thing was normal. "I didn't know if this is how adults acted," she said.
Sampson previously spoke on her allegations against Kelly in a May 2018 interview with the Washington Post. Kelly, she said at the time, makes people feel like "a wounded puppy." Now that she’s older, however, she sees things differently. "I see how wrong stuff was and how ultimately gross and pedophile-ish it was," she said then. Sampson reportedly settled a lawsuit against Kelly for $250,000 in 2002.
An attorney for Kelly, who was recently the subject of a critically acclaimed Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly, issued a statement in response to Sampson's latest comments. "[Kelly] wants to put out his music and continue performing for people," Steven Greenberg toldNBC News Friday. "And I expect that's what he'll be able to do."
