R. Kelly’s Daughter Accuses Him Of Sexually Abusing Her As A Child And How It Drove Her To Attempt Suicide
Buku Abi, also known as Joann Kelly, has alleged that her father, disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly, sexually abused her as a child in a new documentary.
Abi, 26, shares her story over the course of the two-part documentary which also includes interviews with her mother, Drea Kelly, siblings Jaah Kelly and Robert Kelly Jr. and her grandparents.
Abi disclosed that her father abused her when she was eight or nine. She said she first reported his alleged sexual abuse to her mother in 2009 when she was about 10.
“For a long time I did not even want to believe that it happened,” a tearful Abi says in “R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey,” now streaming on TVEI. “I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.”
“I really feel like that one millisecond completely just changed my whole life and changed who I was as a person. Changed the sparkle I had and the light that I used to carry.”
Kelly, 57, is serving a 31-year sentence at a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina after he was convicted in 2021 and 2022 of child sexual abuse charges.
Abi told the documentary her father’s alleged abuse triggered multiple suicide attempts and a stay in a mental hospital. She continued:
“For a long time I was in a really hard space mentally and so I ended up in a mental hospital, a psych ward, whatever you want to call it… because I hit a point in my life where multiple times, I had tried to take my own life.”
Abi said she finally confessed to her mother Andrea Kelly when she broke down crying in the car on the way to school.
Andrea checked her into the hospital that day, and she stayed for two-and-a-half weeks under frequent observation. She added:
“I was on really hard suicide watch. And then for two, three months after that, I was in outpatient basically, so I had to go there every day.
I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I didn’t care about what happened to me.
She just immediately dropped everything and was asking, “What’s going on? Are you OK?”
She was really worried, and in that moment, I broke down, and I had to tell her like, “I don’t think I’m OK. I don’t think that I can do this. I don’t think that I’m going to make it through to live out the rest of my life”.”
SEE ALSO: R&B Singer, R. Kelly Gets Fresh 20-Year Jail Term For Child Porn Crimes And Other Charges
Abi said she felt extremely guilty about the effect her deep depression had on her younger siblings Jaah and Robert Jr – now 23 and 22.
“That was definitely scary. Waking up and not knowing, is my sister going to be alive?” Robert said on the documentary.
“Now that my sisters are older and stronger, it’s definitely subsided, but I still have my moments when they go through something hard.
It’s always triggering because you never know what could be someone’s last straw, and I’ve seen both of them get very close to their last straws, including my mom.”
Abi said her father’s alleged sexual abuse shattered her image of her father, and for a long time, she didn’t want to believe it happened.
“I didn’t know that even if he was a bad person that he would do something to me,” she said of her father in the first episode of the documentary.
“I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom,” she admitted.
Abi further stated that she “100% feel[s] like he deserves to be in jail.”
“All I know is what happened to me,” Abi later expands in the documentary.
“All I know is what happened to my mom. All I know is what happened to my brother and sister. And, because of that, I feel like as a family, we all know why he’s in jail.”
“He’s a monster,” Abi’s grandmother Melissa Lee says of R. Kelly in the first installment.
“There’s no other word for him, he’s a monster. What he has done to those kids, what he has done to our daughter. … He should not live. I think putting him in jail is too easy.”
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean said his client vehemently denied the allegations. She said:
“His ex-wife made the same allegation years ago, and it was investigated by the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services and was unfounded.
“And the “filmmakers,” whoever they are, did not reach out to Mr. Kelly or his team to even allow him to deny these hurtful claims.”
Although Kelly evaded prison when he was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008, he was later convicted in 2021 of all nine racketeering and sex trafficking charges in New York.
In 2022, he was convicted in a federal trial held in Chicago of six out of 13 charges, including counts for child pornography and obstruction of justice.
He was sentenced to 30 years in prison in his New York trial and 20 years in the later Chicago federal trial.
However, the judge overseeing the case ruled that 19 of those 20 years would be served concurrently with his earlier sentence, meaning he has an effective sentence of 31 years now.