R. Kelly’s daughter, Buku Abi, is speaking out about being sexually assaulted by her father as a child. In the final minutes of Karma: A Daughter’s Journey — a new two-episode documentary series from TVEI Streaming Network — Abi, 26, claims that she was abused by Kelly, 57, when she was an adolescent.
“He was my everything. For a long time, I didn’t even want to believe that it happened. I didn’t know that even if he was a bad person that he would do something to me,” said Abi — born Joann Kelly — also adding that she first reported the abuse to her mother Andrea in 2009, when she was 10 years old. “I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.”
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In the first episode of Karma: A Daughter’s Journey, Abi did not share specifics about the alleged abuse, but stated she believes from “personal experience” that jail is a “well-suited place” for her father.
“I really feel like that one millisecond completely just changed my whole life and changed who I was as a person and changed the sparkle I had and the light I used to carry,” Abi said. “After I told my mom, I didn’t go over there anymore; my brother [Robert] and sister [Jaah], we didn’t go over there anymore. And even up until now I struggle with it a lot.”
In the second episode, Abi provides more detail about the alleged abuse, stating that it happened when she was eight or nine years old. “I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she tearfully recalled, per PEOPLE. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there, and I pretended to be asleep.”
Buku went on to say that when she eventually told her mother about the abuse and they went to the police and filed a complaint, “They couldn’t prosecute him because I waited too long. So at that point in my life, I felt like I said something for nothing.”
Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean has since responded to the claims, telling PEOPLE, “Mr. Kelly vehemently denies these allegations. 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.”
In 2022, Kelly was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking charges in New York and sentenced to 30 years in prison. In February 2023, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of child pornography and enticement of minors for sex, in a Chicago trial. Kelly is concurrently serving 19 years of his two sentences, at this time, and will be eligible for release in 2045.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
