Buku Abi, the estranged daughter of convicted sex offender R Kelly, has alleged that she endured sexual abuse at the hands of her father in a harrowing new documentary.
The notorious rapper, who is currently serving a concurrent 19-year (total 31-year) sentence for child sex abuse, sex trafficking and racketeering, was accused of childhood abuse by the 26-year-old for the first time on TVEI Network’s R Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey.
The two-part documentary also features testimony from her siblings and mother Drea Kelly, who was married to him from 1996 to 2009.
Abi, who was born Joanne Kelly, claimed the abuse took place in Illinois in the early 2000s.
She said: ‘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.
‘I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.’
She added that jail was a ‘well-suited place’ for him, as she knew from ‘personal experiences’.
‘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,’ she continued at the end of the first episode.
‘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 offered more detail about the alleged abuse.
She continued, emotional: ‘I just remember waking up to him touching me. And I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there, and I pretended to be asleep.’
After finally opening up to her mother, the pair filed a complaint to the police as a ‘Jane Doe’, per People.
She added: ‘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.’
Elsewhere in the documentary, Abi said the alleged abuse led to suicidal thoughts.
‘I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died,’ she explained.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, denied these latest claims in a statement to People.
The statement reads: ‘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.’
The former R&B artist was convicted of sex trafficking and racketeering in September 2021 after a six week trial at Brooklyn Federal Court, with Judge Ann M. Donnelly concluding he had created ‘a trail of broken lives’.
In February 2023, Kelly was sentenced in Chicago to 20 years in prison on charges of child pornography and enticement of minors for sex.
The Metro has reached out to R Kelly’s legal representative for comment
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