This week, “CBS This Morning” aired a two-part interview with R. Kelly—the first he’s given since “Surviving R. Kelly” brought a wider consciousness to his alleged pattern of disturbing abuse over the years. More of the singer’s conversation with Gayle King will air as a primetime special today (March 8), but the clips that have premiered thus far show Kelly pulling out all the stops to assert his innocence. (Kelly currently faces charges on 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse in Cook County, Illinois.) Quickly turning from nonchalant to anguished to enraged, Kelly’s behavior includes certain denial and manipulation tactics commonly employed by abusers, according to experts in the field.

From relativizing the claims to minimizing the accusers and their supporters, Kelly repeatedly distorts reality by negotiating around the accusations rather than directly engaging with them. Kelly’s outsized reactions to King’s reasonable questions are indicative of larger diversion patterns employed by abusers, experts say. “When you’re a clinician, you can’t watch this stuff without your brain flying in 15 different directions,” says Maria-Anne Duncan, a licensed clinical social worker who has counseled sexual assault survivors and abusers alike. “I couldn’t see him as R. Kelly, all I could see is the perpetrator who is now trying to state his case, and wasn’t stating it very well, in my opinion.” Adds Dr. Patrick Preston, a psychologist who works with sexual assault survivors, “The whole interview got turned into the story of his perceived victimhood and his right in the world.”

At the top of the interview, Kelly says he agreed to speak to King because he is “tired of all the lies.” When asked to state exactly what those lies are, Kelly mischaracterizes the allegations by focusing on the more outlandish claims, rather than the actual behaviors behind them—a classic diversion tactic. “I have a harem, a whatcha call it, a cult,” he says, a small smile cracking on his face. “I don’t even really know what a cult is but I know I don’t have one.”

Kelly also claims that his 2008 trial for 14 counts of child pornography, for which he was acquitted because the jury could not confirm the girl's identity, has influenced what people think of the current accusations, which he finds unfair and irrelevant. When King presses him to admit that “the past is relevant with you with underage girls,” Kelly quickly shuts her down. “Absolutely no, it’s not because for one, I beat my case,” he says.

Both Dr. Preston and Duncan take pause with Kelly’s repeated focus on how his past acquittal affirms his current innocence. “Most people with basic empathy pause if they’re accused of something,” Dr. Preston says. “But abusers manipulate that as a way of controlling the person they’re abusing. So once they get caught, there’s no flexibility to go outside for some self-reflection. For them [the accusation] just further supports that the world has wronged them because on some level, they believe they have the right to take whatever they want.” Duncan makes a similar point, explaining that when most people are falsely accused of a crime, they do everything they can to stress their innocence. “His comment in the interview was ‘I beat the charge’—and isn’t it interesting that he used the word ‘beat?’” she says. “What he’s saying is, ‘Yeah, I know I did the wrong thing, but I got away with it.’”

When King lists the names of some of Kelly’s accusers—Andrea Kelly, Kitti Jones, Lisa Van Allen, Lizette Martinez, Jerhonda Pace, Faith Rogers, Asante McGee—and asks if all these women are lying in the Lifetime documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly,” the singer asserts that they are. Taking on a soft, hushed voice, he says, “You can start a rumor on a guy like me or a celebrity just like that. All you have to do is push a button on your phone and say: ‘So and so did this to me. R. Kelly did this to me.’” If one woman can make money or gain clout from defaming him, he suggests, others will follow, blaming “the power of social media.”