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Buku Abi aka Joann Kelly as a child with her father R. Kelly.
TVEI Network (Screenshot)
The musician R. Kelly is serving a 31-year prison sentence for sexual abuse. In a new documentary, his eldest daughter Buku Abi now also reports that she was sexually abused by him as a child.
More than five years after coming out in support of R. Kelly survivors, the singer's daughter, Buku Abi, is speaking out publicly for the first time about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father during her childhood.
In the new documentary "R. Kelly's Karma: A Daughter's Journey" on the streaming network TVEI, Abi, who was born Joann Kelly in 1998, says she was abused by her father when she was eight or nine years old.
"He was my everything. For a long time, I didn't want to believe it happened," Abi says in the first episode of the two-part series, according to People. "Even though he was a bad person, I didn't expect him to do anything to me."
In the second episode of the documentary, Abi recalls how she "woke up and he was touching me. I didn't know what to do, so I just lay there and pretended to be asleep."
As a little girl, she kept the assault to herself. "I was too scared to tell anyone. I was too scared to tell my mother."
A court in Chicago has upheld a 2022 conviction against US singer R. Kelly.
Antonio Perez/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
But the incident had far-reaching consequences. "I feel like that one millisecond changed my whole life, changed me as a person, changed the glow that I had and the light that I had inside of me."
At some point, she told her mother, Drea Kelly, what had happened. She pressed charges. But there were no legal consequences for the singer: "They couldn't prosecute him because I had waited too long. At the time, I had the feeling that I had said it for nothing."
Nevertheless, the family's life changed. Drea Kelly had already filed for a restraining order against R. Kelly in September 2005 after he allegedly attacked her when she told him she wanted a divorce.
The divorce was finally finalized in 2009. Buku Abi stopped seeing her father from then on: "After I told my mother, I stopped going, and neither did my brother [Robert] or my sister [Jaah]. I still struggle with it today."
R. Kelly's lawyer Jennifer Bonjean "vehemently denied" Buku Abi's allegations in a statement to People, saying the filmmakers never contacted Kelly to "deny these hurtful allegations".
"His ex-wife made the same allegations years ago, which were investigated by the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services and proved to be unfounded," Bonjean said.
In 2022, R. Kelly, whose real name is Robert Kelly, was sentenced to 30 years in prison in New York for racketeering and sex trafficking.
In February 2023, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Chicago for child pornography and enticing minors to engage in sexual activity. Robert Kelly is currently serving 19 years of both sentences concurrently and cannot be released until 2045 at the earliest.
Following the release of the documentary "Surviving R. Kelly" in 2019, Abi shared her support for the singer's accusers in an emotional statement.
"The same monster you all confront me with is my father. I know exactly who and what he is," she said at the time. "I grew up in this house. My decision not to talk about him and his actions is for my peace of mind. For my emotional state. And for MY healing. I have to do what's best for me."
Many victims of child sexual abuse take years or decades before they disclose what happened to them. Abi says today that she believes prison is a "well-suited place" for Kelly, which she knows from "personal experience".
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