Crime
Buku Abi, R. Kelly’s daughter, claims he sexually abused her as a child
R. Kelly is serving two concurrent sentences on charges starting from child pornography and soliciting sex from minors to racketeering and sex trafficking in each Chicago and New York, but his daughter now publicly claims she is amongst dozens of his victims.
Buki Abi, born Joann Kelly, speaks for the primary time in “R. “Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey” is currently streaming on the TVEI network. As reported People magazine through the two-part documentary, Abi, now 26, claims Kelly sexually abused her when she was 8 or 9 years old.
“I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she recalled tearfully within the second episode. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just lay there and pretended to sleep.
“(My father) was all the pieces to me. For a very long time I didn’t even wish to imagine that it had happened. I didn’t know that even when he was a bad person, he would do something to me,” Abi explains within the documentary. “I used to be too scared to inform anyone. I used to be too afraid to inform my mom.
Abi further stated that on the age of 10, just a 12 months after her father was acquitted on child pornography charges in Chicago, she finally reported the abuse to her mother, R. Kelly’s ex-wife Andrea Kelly. The two filed a grievance with local police under the pseudonym “Jane Doe,” but no further motion was taken.
“They couldn’t charge him because I waited too long. That’s why at this point in my life I felt like I said something for nothing,” Abi said.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, appears to verify the filing of the grievance, saying in a statement to People magazine: “Mr. Kelly vehemently denies these allegations. His ex-wife made the identical allegation years ago, and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigated the case and located it to be unfounded. Bonjean further states that the filmmakers haven’t contacted R. Kelly or his team for comment.
In “R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey” Abi is joined by her mother, brothers Jaah and Robert Jr., and her maternal grandparents to debate life after her father’s beliefs. The documentary also reportedly examines the regularity of “delayed disclosure” by sexual assault survivors, and the impact of the alleged abuse on Abi’s life, including self-harm and suicidal thoughts.
“I got to the purpose where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died,” he recalled. “(My mom) was really worried and at that point I broke down and had to tell her, ‘I don’t think I’m okay.’ I don’t think I can do it. I don’t think I’ll be able to live the rest of my life.”
Abi is now expecting her first child and has no plans to introduce him to her father, for whom she says prison is a “well-suited place.”
“I really feel like that one millisecond completely changed my entire life, it changed who I was as a person, it changed the glow that I had and the light that I carried,” she said, later adding: “And even to this day I’m very attached to it I’m struggling.”
“R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey” is currently streaming on the TVEI network.