Buku Abi, the daughter of disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly, has bravely opened up for the first time about the abuse she allegedly endured as a child at his hands. In her two-part documentary, Karma: A Daughter’s Journey, which premiered on October 11, the 26-year-old reveals that she first confided in her mother, Andrea, about the abuse back in 2009 when she was just 10 years old.
In the documentary, she reflects on her complex feelings, saying,
“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 he would do something to me,” she says in the documentary, the first episode of which is streaming now.
“I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.”
Though Buku Abi, born Joann Kelly, keeps the details of the alleged abuse vague in the first episode, she expresses her belief that jail is a “well-suited place” for her father, now 57, based on her “personal experience.”
“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 says. “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 response to the documentary, R. Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, issued a statement to People, saying,
“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.”
As a reminder, in February 2023, Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Chicago for charges related to child pornography and enticing minors for sex. This followed a previous 30-year sentence for racketeering and sex trafficking in New York. Currently, he’s serving both sentences concurrently and is set to be eligible for release in 2045.