Comeuppance for R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell

A New York court had found R. Kelly (centre) guilty on eight counts of sex trafficking and one of racketeering in September 2021. He was sentenced to 30 years in prison on June 29, 2022. Kelly faces more charges, including for making child sexual abuse videos, in other states in the US.

Finally, two back-to-back rulings that prove justice is blind: a man, a woman, one black, one white, put into prison for 30 and 20 years, respectively, for sexual offences against minors.

American singer R. Kelly, 55, and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, charged with sex-trafficking and grooming under-age girls for sex, have been found guilty. Both left a trail of unspeakable damage, of many young girls suicidal and struggling with mental health issues. For the women who dared to sue, knowing full well the wealth and reach, fame and connections of those they name, plus the long, long wait for courts to come to any conclusion, it was more a declaration of their pain than any real expectation of being believed or even compensated.

The sentencing goes beyond routine punishing of the guilty. The world rarely is that just, justice seldom so simple. To publicly proclaim that the buck stops with these two, the formerly glamorous icons of phenomenal privilege, is law at its moral uplifting best. Knowing as we do the multiple cases dragging under Indian jurisdiction itself – with actors, godmen and tycoons coming back with articulate and glib legal teams when accused – these two judgments act also as inevitable fair play.

Now that Kelly and Ghislaine will remain behind bars presumably unto death, even if still protesting their innocence and recounting back stories of their own abuse that led them to abuse in turn, those who suffered at their hands can finally return to their lives. Abuse, as we know, is buried so long, negated and disbelieved by most of those who are confided in or trusted, that it pixelates into an uphill battle of impossible healing for the abused. While the abuser is at large, continuing to abuse, and sometimes feted, like in the case of the famous. In circles of sin, the powerful only get more powerful. The defeated think themselves damned and doomed.

One is slowly learning to separate art from the artist – we watch Michael Jackson’s moonwalk now with mixed feelings; if a body of work can be seen as an independent entity, there is only jubilation when the guilty, however gifted, are held accountable. Loud conversations about cancel culture and woke psychobabble only deepen the mist around guilt. Intentions and motivations, however, pale against actual crimes.

It does not help that sexual abuse itself has only recently emerged as a casual and rampant occurrence that owes its survival to the secrecy it takes for granted, to the shamed silence on the part of the abused. The recent auto correction of ‘victim’ to ‘survivor’ sends strong signals to future offenders. In the wake of these two landmark verdicts, each survivor stands tall today, living to tell the tale.

Nothing can change the past. For previous misdemeanours behind closed doors to be brought to light, brave-hearts have to continue to find the courage within themselves to come out and speak audibly. Wrongs cannot be righted, but let's park shame at the right door.