Prime members, you can listen to Redhanded early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the app today.

I'm Hannah. I'm Sruti. And welcome to a pretty terrifying Redhanded. I would be amazed if anyone listening hasn't heard about this.

No, they definitely will have, but I suspect what might be the case, as is often the case with stories like this, is that sometimes people don't get past the headlines.

And that's not a judgment, because I, for one, also didn't realise just how fucked up this was until we did the steep dive.

Yeah, I think I would probably count myself in that number as well.

So we've got nothing to say. Nothing to announce. So let's just get on with it.

In 2021, a 51-year-old man referred to only as daddy by the followers of his alleged sex cult was found guilty on eight counts of sex trafficking and one count of racketeering.

The cult was made up predominantly of teenage girls. This man referred to them as his babies.

To be one of daddy's babies, you needed to adhere to some very strict rules, which included asking permission to do anything from brushing your teeth to using the toilet.

And breaking any of daddy's rules would result in a swift punishment, which could be anything from a beating, confinement, starvation, or all three.

And although this man only faced justice in 2021, his crimes began in the early 1990s.

For three decades, he abused young women, seemingly with complete impunity.

And he did all of this while consistently topping the chance across the world with a string of R&B hits.

We are, of course, talking about the pide-piper of R&B himself, our Kelly.

But before we dig into his crimes, let's take a look at Kelly's formative years to see how he became the poisonous individual we know today.

Robert Silvestre Kelly was born on the 8th of January 1967, to a poor single mother on the south side of Chicago.

He was the third of four children born to Joanne Kelly, a schoolteacher from Guadalupe.

Not much is known about the identity of Kelly's dad, other than Joanne calling him a deadbeat.

Interestingly, all of Joanne's four children had different fathers.

Kelly's elder sibling is Teresa, then he has an older half-brother Bruce, and a younger half-brother, Carrie.

According to Bruce, Kelly was a super shy and introverted kid, and Bruce could make him cry by just staring at him.

If people haven't watched, and I know this is very early in the episode already to be bringing it up, but obviously surviving our Kelly, the most famous of documentaries regarding this case,

...