‘Surviving R. Kelly Part II’: What Terrifying Promise Does Jerhonda Pace Say She Made to R. Kelly?
In Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning, like the earlier Lifetime three-part docuseries, R&B singer R. Kelly’s accusers spoke out about their allegedly abusive experiences with him. The allegations against Kelly, many of which involve minors and all of which he has denied, date all the way back to 1991.
In Part II of the docuseries, 24-year-old Jerhonda Pace detailed her sexual abuse accusations against Kelly, including a disturbing suicide pact she says he forced her to agree to.
Jerhonda Pace met Kelly at 15
Pace, originally a fan of Kelly’s, at first supported the singer during one of his trials for child pornography charges. But everything changed after she met him on a tour bus when she was 15. She alleges that his sexual abuse against her began when she was 16.
The graduate student, now a writer and married mother of three, said her childhood sexual abuse left her vulnerable to predators later in life. “Honestly, I had never received counseling from everything I’ve been through, from being molested at age four, six, and eight, to then Rob, he abused me again at 16. So abuse was my comfort zone. It really did damage me,” Pace said.
When she was in high school, Pace said she knew she had a “nonchalant mom,” “one of those that didn’t care.” “Nobody in my life had valued me,” she shared.
It was that history, as well as Kelly’s stories about being sexually abused himself as a child, that built her bond with the singer. “When I started out with Rob, I didn’t get this overly sexual guy. It was more, ‘I care about you. You’ve been through this, and I want to protect you from all of that stuff,” she said, adding that he promised her “security” and “protection.”
Pace alleged the R&B singer regularly abused her
But after her sexual relationship with Kelly began, Pace told Surviving R. Kelly Part II producers that things took a dark turn quickly.
“I didn’t expect him to be this monster. I didn’t expect him to be so evil,” she lamented.
Pace claimed that when she broke Kelly’s “rules,” which included everything from going to the bathroom or drinking water to speaking to others without his permission, she received harsh physical punishments, from starvation to beatings.
“Every time that Rob would flip out, it would always result in him becoming physical with me. I knew I couldn’t defend myself because if I hit him, it would be worse. If I say something, it would be worse,” the author said. “It’s a really messed up thing, but it’s what I grew up around, and I feel like that’s why I ended up with Rob.”
Pace also hinted that Kelly’s complicated relationship with his mother might have led him to lash out against women in abusive ways. “He don’t like women. He treats women so badly because he has a hate for them,” she said.
The alleged survivor said R. Kelly made her make a suicide pact
Most shockingly, Pace even claimed Kelly pushed her to agree to end her life if she ever had to live without him. “With Rob, I was part of a suicide pact with him,” she explained emotionally. “And if anything was to happen to him, if he was to go to jail or someone was to harm him, I was supposed to kill myself.”
Pace alleged that Kelly even had a detailed plan for how she could carry out the “pact” if it ever came time.
“When the suicide pact came about, Rob and I was in the mirror room, and he told me that if I was everything to him like that I say he is, that there would be no life worth living, you know, if something was to happen to him,” she claimed. “He’s like, ‘If something happens to me, I want you to take these pills.’”
Pace said he left the pills in a pocket in a suit of his so she could retrieve them. “He said, this is what you do. This is a suicide pact.”
And because she was so broken down after years of alleged abuse from Kelly and others, Pace said she was finally willing to end it all. “When I was with him I was really ready to take my own life because Rob, he was everything to me. Like, Rob was my life,” she confessed.
