Aaliyah's Ex Damon Dash Speaks Out About R. Kelly Relationship

Aaliyah‘s ex-boyfriend Damon Dash is sharing his thoughts on her relationship with R. Kelly.

The 48-year-old entrepreneur and co-founder of Roc-A-Fella opened up in a clip from the upcoming series Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning, posted by TMZ on Thursday (January 2).

R. Kelly is currently incarcerated, facing charges of sex-trafficking, sexual assault, and child pornography.

“Aaliyah was like the sacrificial lamb for all that, bro, because she didn’t deserve none of that,” Damon says in the preview. “Good soul, good girl, and wasn’t even really so resentful — like, ‘Let that man live, but keep him the f— away from me.’ That’s all she wanted, she was just happy to be away.”

Damon and Aaliyah met in 2000 and dated until she died in a plane crash in 2001 at age 22.

Damon says he knew “the whole story,” remarking, “I know it was the cover-up and all of that, but how does that cover it up? It just made the conversation less crazy, like, ‘Oh, he married a child.’”

“That was a headline, that was like, a rumor,” Damon continued. “That was something talked about like it was normal. It wasn’t like, ‘Ew, disgusting, you married a 13-year-old.’ It was like, ‘Oh you married Aaliyah?’ She’s 13.”

The interviewer then corrects Damon Dash to let him know that Aaliyah was 15, not 13, when she and R. Kelly got married, to which Damon replied, “Yeah, but 15 is 13, man. I don’t have to be accurate because I don’t care. 15, 13, anything under 18 is disgusting. She was a child.”

Surviving R. Kelly Part II: The Reckoning will air in three parts on January 2, 3, and 4.

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