R. Kelly's daughter Buku Abi, also known as Joann Kelly, has alleged that the imprisoned singer sexually abused her as a child in a new documentary for the TVEI Streaming Network.
“He was my everything. For a long time I didn't even want to believe it had happened. I didn't know that even if he was a bad person, he would do something to me,” Buku Abi says in tears R. Kelly's Karma: A Daughter's Journey. “I was too scared to tell anyone. I was too scared to tell my mother.
Her untold story is revealed as part of the two-part documentary that includes emotional interviews with Abi's brothers, Jaah and Robert Kelly Jr. and their mother, Drea Kelly. “What he did to me, he did to me. But you didn't have to do that to my damn kids,” his ex-wife says.
“I really feel like that millisecond completely changed my whole life and changed who I was as a person and changed the spark that I had and the light that I carried. After I told my mother, I never went there again,” says Abi, via People. “My brother [Robert] and sister [Jaah]we never went there again. And even up until now, I've struggled with this a lot.
Kelly's attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, of the New York-based Bonjean Law Group, was not available at the time The Hollywood journalist contacted for comment.
“Mr. Kelly vehemently denies these allegations,” he said in a statement to People. “His ex-wife made the same allegation years ago, and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigated it and found it to be unfounded… And the 'filmmakers,' whoever they are, have not reached out Mr. Kelly or his team to even allow him to deny these offensive claims.
In 2021, Kelly, who had become an R&B superstar known for her anthem “I Believe I Can Fly,” was convicted after a sex trafficking trial that followed decades in which she avoided criminal responsibility for numerous charges of misconduct with young women and children.
Public condemnation and his trial didn't come until a widely watched docuseries was released, Surviving R. Kelly, it helped make her case a symbol of the #MeToo era and gave voice to accusers who wondered whether their stories had previously been ignored because they were black women.
The first two episodes of R. Kelly's Karma: A Daughter's Journey are streaming on the TVEI streaming network.