More than two years after R. Kelly was convicted on six of 13 counts of producing child pornography and enticing minors into illegal sexual activity, another victim of the R&B’s singer’s alleged sexual abuse has spoken out — his own daughter.
In a two-part docuseries called R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey on TVEI Streaming Network, Kelly’s daughter Buku Abi — who was born JoAnn to R. Kelly and Andrea Kelly in 1998 — alleged that Kelly sexually abused her as a child. She reported this to Andrea in 2009, when she was 10 years old.
“He was my everything,” said Abi in the documentary. “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.”
R&B singer R. Kelly leaves the Leighton Criminal Courts Building following a hearing on June 26, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. Prosecutors turned over to Kelly’s defense team a DVD that alleges to show Kelly having sex with an underage girl in the 1990s. Kelly has been charged with multiple sex crimes involving four women, three of whom were underage at the time of the alleged encounters. In an October 2024 docuseries, R. Kelly’s daughter claimed she was also a victim of his sexual abuse.
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In the second part of the documentary, Abi goes further into detail about what happened, explaining, “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.”
Abi’s revelation comes five years after she vocalized her support for the survivors featured in the Lifetime docuseries Surviving R. Kelly.
In 2022, R. Kelly was sentenced to 30 years in prison for racketeering and sex trafficking charges based out of New York. In 2023, he was sentenced in Chicago to 20 years in prison on charges of child pornography and enticement of minors for sex. The “I Believe I Can Fly” singer is currently serving 19 years of his two sentences concurrently, and will be eligible for release in 2045.
Following Abi’s account, R. Kelly’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjean issued a statement to People denying the allegations, 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.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to https://www.rainn.org/.
If you or someone you know is experiencing child abuse, call The Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1 (800) 422-4453, open 24/7.
