R. Kelly has cleared up the rumors that he recently welcomed a child with his fiancée Joycelyn Savage.
Savage, one of the disgraced R&B singer’s alleged sex crime victims, claimed earlier this month that she had given birth to her and Kelly’s first child via IVF (in vitro fertilisation).
An Instagram account claiming to be Savage posted photos of the newborn baby girl, who is allegedly called Ava Lee Kelly and was born on December 8. The posts have since been removed.
In a rare interview with Chicago radio host Rick Party from behind bars, however, R. Kelly set the record straight and denied having fathered a child with his fiancée.
“I can’t name names,” he said. “I can just say Joycelyn is my fiancée and I love her and she loves me, and we’re together. She is not in my case, none of that. She’s not against me.”
When asked about the baby rumors, he replied: “Hell naw! She didn’t have a child.”
Joycelyn Savage’s father, Timothy, also refuted claims that his daughter welcomed a child in a video posted to Instagram earlier this week.
“My daughter Joycelyn is not pregnant. This is a hundred percent accurate,” he said. “If had a granddaughter, I would be the first to say I love this child, no matter what the situation is, period. But rest assured, that’s not my granddaughter.”
In follow-up posts, Timothy claimed that the account that posted the baby photos is a “fraud page,” which “has been confirmed by the parents of the child that was in the picture.”
He also expressed concerns over the wellbeing and whereabouts of his daughter, although he doesn’t believe R. Kelly is to blame.
“My concern is to make sure she’s okay and healthy and fine,” he said in the aforementioned video. “At this point in time, I don’t even know if my daughter’s alive or not due to the circumstances of what she’s going through.
“Somebody’s trying to throw this family off and deceive us in thinking that my daughter is fine and okay, which I don’t think is true. I need to [see] some type of form of proof of life that my daughter’s still living, because I don’t think that she’s living at this point in time.”
He added: “I truly and honestly believe that my daughter is being harmed in some form of fashion … my thing is not to blame someone that is in jail at this point, but someone that is trying to cover up a situation about my daughter.”
Joycelyn Savage initially claimed she was carrying R. Kelly’s child in her memoir Love and Joy of Robert, which was released in August. She claimed that the singer approved the book and agreed for her to publish a photo of the baby’s ultrasound inside.
However, R. Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean refuted her claim, telling TMZ that Savage “is certainly not pregnant with R. Kelly’s child.” She added that “people are just insane.”
In response, Savage said that Bonjean had no idea she was undergoing IVF prior to Kelly’s incarceration for sex crimes.
“Robert and I were doing IVF because at the time I was told I couldn’t have a baby,” she told Entertainment Tonight. “When he got sent to prison, we paused on it, and I had them freeze my eggs until I was ready.
“Once his lawyer did find out, she wanted me to have an abortion because she didn’t feel that now was the time for me to have a child following the 30-year sentence.”
Savage added: “Me and Robert wanted to have a child for a long time. He is very happy about it, but his lawyer isn’t. Once I told her I was keeping my baby, she didn’t want me to announce it, but I wanted to share the news.”
R. Kelly remains behind bars following his June 2022 sentencing. He was convicted on nine counts of various racketeering and sex trafficking charges in September 2021’s trial; and again in September 2022, this time on child pornography charges by a federal jury in Chicago.
