{"id":41868,"date":"2021-08-27T03:38:29","date_gmt":"2021-08-26T22:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/r-kelly-blew-up-docked-pay-over-male-disney-world-guide-manager\/"},"modified":"2021-08-27T03:38:36","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T22:08:36","slug":"r-kelly-blew-up-docked-pay-over-male-disney-world-guide-manager","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/r-kelly-blew-up-docked-pay-over-male-disney-world-guide-manager\/","title":{"rendered":"R. Kelly Blew up, Docked Pay Over Male Disney World Guide: Manager"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<ul class=\"summary-list summary-list-variant\">\n<li>A former studio manager for R. Kelly testified Thursday about the singer&#8217;s erratic behavior as a boss.<\/li>\n<li>The accused sex criminal once erupted when he didn&#8217;t get a female tour guide for Disney World, Tom Arnold testified.<\/li>\n<li>Arnold said Kelly docked the pay of his employees for minor infractions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"inline-newsletter-signup&#10;                            inline-newsletter-signup-variant&#10;                           headline-regular\" id=\"formContainer\" data-component-type=\"inline-newsletter-module\" data-list=\"10 Things in Politics You Need to Know\" data-acq-source=\"newsinlinesignup\" data-url=\"\">\n<div class=\"js-loader hidden\"><svg xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"svg-icon \" version=\"1.1\" role=\"img\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" viewbox=\"0 0 50 50\" style=\"enable-background:new 0 0 50 50;\" xml:space=\"preserve\">\n                          <title>Loading<\/title>\n                          <desc>Something is loading.<\/desc>\n                          <path fill=\"#111\" d=\"M43.935,25.145c0-10.318-8.364-18.683-18.683-18.683c-10.318,0-18.683,8.365-18.683,18.683h4.068c0-8.071,6.543-14.615,14.615-14.615c8.072,0,14.615,6.543,14.615,14.615H43.935z\">\n                            <animatetransform attributetype=\"xml\" attributename=\"transform\" type=\"rotate\" from=\"0 25 25\" to=\"360 25 25\" dur=\"0.6s\" repeatcount=\"indefinite\"\/>\n                          <\/path>\n                        <\/svg><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>In addition to being an accused sex criminal who allegedly physically abused women and forbade them from going to the bathroom, R. Kelly was also a terrible boss, according to one of his former studio managers.<\/p>\n<p>Tom Arnold, who worked for Kelly between 2004 and 2011, told jurors in testimony Thursday that the R&amp;B singer docked his entire paycheck when he couldn&#8217;t get a female tour guide during a visit to Walt Disney World in Florida.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It needed to be a woman,&#8221; Arnold said. &#8220;His request was that it would be a female tour guide.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Kelly is standing trial for a litany of alleged sex crimes in federal court in Brooklyn. Prosecutors alleged the &#8220;I Believe I Can Fly&#8221; singer directed employees to recruit women for sex, and that he sexually abused his many &#8220;girlfriends.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors asked Arnold in court Wednesday and Thursday about how Kelly directed the people around him. Arnold managed the singer&#8217;s studio in the basement of his Olympic Fields mansion outside of Chicago, where women say he forced them to remain for days at a time \u2014 sometimes without permitting them to leave their rooms to use the bathroom. Arnold also occasionally served as Kelly&#8217;s road manager and held other responsibilities.<\/p>\n<p>Arnold detailed how Kelly&#8217;s employees maintained slips of paper with his phone number on it and gave them to women at concerts and parties at Kelly&#8217;s direction. The testimony appeared to corroborate a witness who took the stand earlier at the trial, saying that her relationship with the singer began when she attended one of his concerts as a teenager. She&#8217;d said a member of Kelly&#8217;s entourage handed her a piece of paper with his phone number.<\/p>\n<p>In his testimony, Arnold also disclosed some of Kelly&#8217;s more ostentatious quirks. He maintained a massive aquarium with sharks and large fish on the basement of his home. And among the people he employed was a man named &#8220;Bubba,&#8221; whose entire job was to be available to play basketball whenever Kelly wanted to, Arnold said.<\/p>\n<p>Arnold said everyone who entered the Olympia Fields property was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement that forbade them from taking photos or recording anything. He also said Kelly instructed him and other employees to &#8220;scatter&#8221; whenever a &#8220;female guest&#8221; entered the room.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If it was a female guest, we would just clear out,&#8221; he said, adding: &#8220;That was what we were instructed to do, just leave the area.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Arnold testified that Kelly frequently docked pay for minor infractions. Kelly slashed money from a paycheck because Arnold once purchased a sweatband for one of Kelly&#8217;s &#8220;girlfriends&#8221; who lived with him, who he was forbidden to speak to. On another occasion, he said, Kelly&#8217;s entire entourage had their pay docked because someone ate the singer&#8217;s doughnuts.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We were all fined because someone ate his doughnuts,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Arnold&#8217;s breaking point was after the Disney World trip, in 2011. He had been tasked with booking hotel rooms and a female tour guide for the trip. But when he called Disney, only male tour guides were available, he was told. When Kelly&#8217;s tour bus rolled up to the park, the singer saw the male tour guide and erupted, Arnold said.<\/p>\n<p>A few days later, Arnold&#8217;s wife called him. His paycheck had arrived in the mail. Taxes had been taken out, but the remaining balance he was paid was $0, Arnold said.<\/p>\n<p>Soon afterward, he quit.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A former studio manager for R. Kelly testified Thursday about the singer&#8217;s erratic behavior as a boss. The accused sex criminal once erupted when he &#8230; <a title=\"R. Kelly Blew up, Docked Pay Over Male Disney World Guide: Manager\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/r-kelly-blew-up-docked-pay-over-male-disney-world-guide-manager\/\" aria-label=\"More on R. Kelly Blew up, Docked Pay Over Male Disney World Guide: Manager\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":41869,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41868"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/districtchronicles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}