Buku Abi, also known as Joann Kelly, claimed her disgraced R&B singer father R.Kellysexually assaulted her as a child in a new documentary.
“For a long time, I didn’t even want to believe this was happening,” Abi says through tears in “R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey,” now airing on TVEI. “I was too scared to tell anyone. I was too scared to tell my mother.
“I truly feel like one millisecond completely changed my life and who I was as a person. I changed the glow I had and the light I carried.
Kelly has denied the allegations through an attorney.
Abi shares her story during the two-part documentary directed by Venessa Renee, which also includes interviews with her mother Drea Kelly, her siblings Jaah Kelly and Robert Kelly Jr., and her grandparents.
“He’s a monster,” Melissa Lee, Abi’s grandmother, says of R. Kelly in the first installment. “There’s no other word for him, he’s a monster.” What he did to those children, what he did to our daughter. …He shouldn’t live. I think putting him in prison is too easy.
Kelly is currently serving a sentence after having been sentenced in 2021 for sex trafficking and racketeering. In 2023, his original 30-year sentence was extended to 31 years following his conviction on separate charges of child pornography and enticement. The first federal charges against Kelly were filed almost concurrently with the release of the 2019 Lifetime documentary series, “Surviving R. Kelly”, which detailed decades of alleged sexual abuse by the singer and featured several accusers.
“R. Kelly’s Karma” opens with Abi stating that she “feels 100% like he deserves to be in prison.”
“All I know is what happened to me,” Abi later elaborates in the documentary. “All I know is what happened to my mother. 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 prison.
R. Kelly during a 2019 hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court building in Chicago.
(Antonio Pérez/Chicago Tribune/Associated Press)
According to Abi, her father “meant everything to (her)” when she was growing up. But everything changed one night when Kelly was throwing a party and Abi decided to sleep in the office instead of his room so she could be closer to him and the evening’s events.
“I just remember waking up to him touching me,” said Abi, who said the incident happened when she was 8 or 9 years old. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just laid there and pretended to be asleep. »
She adds: “I was too scared to tell anyone. It was hard to even accept that it had happened. For a long time, I just tried to put it somewhere else. But it got to a point where it was too much. It was too much not to talk about. It was too much to not take care of. So I had to tell my mother. When I told him, it completely broke his heart.
The documentary details how Abi reported the abuse to her mother in 2009, when she was 10 years old. According to court documents the filmmakers obtained when Kelly’s divorce papers were unsealed in 2019, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigated Kelly for allegedly molesting preteen Jane Doe in 2009. The filing also stated that “the case officer believed the abuse had occurred. , but due to the time elapsed between the abuse and Jane Doe’s reporting of the incident, the charges were dropped.
Abi, who remembers speaking to various officials after telling her mother about the abuse, says it was difficult because she felt like she had spoken out at the time “for nothing”.
“Basically, they couldn’t pursue it because I waited too long,” Abi says. “I felt like it was a waste. I felt like I was putting my mother through so much for nothing.
Kelly’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, responded to Abi’s allegations in a statement to People.
“Mr. Kelly vehemently denies these allegations,” Bonjean said. “His ex-wife made the same allegation years ago, and she was investigated by the Department of Child Services and to the Illinois family and it was unfounded…And the “producers”, whoever they are, have not contacted Mr. Kelly or his team to allow him to deny these hurtful claims.
In addition to the allegations, “R. Kelly’s Karma” features Abi and her siblings sharing what they remember about running away from their childhood home with their mother and how they were affected by R. Kelly’s actions.
“I don’t want to be like him in any way,” Robert Kelly Jr. says.
Abi, who gave birth to her first child while filming the documentary, also talks candidly about recording her duet with Kelly (“Wanna Be There”) when she was younger, her struggles with self-harm and her previous miscarriage, as well as more hopeful notes for her family’s future.
“Me and my brother and my sister are going to change the narrative about the Kelly family name,” says Abi. “For my son, this name is going to be something he can be proud of. It will be something he wears with honor.
