R Kelly’s daughter has explained how close she came to suicide after her father allegedly sexually abused her as a child.
Buku Abi, 26, said in TVEI Streaming Network’s two-episode documentary Karma: A Daughter’s Journey that the disgraced singer abused her when she was eight or nine years old.
She said she first reported her alleged sexual abuse to her mother in 2009, when she was about 10 years old.
Kelly is serving a 31-year sentence in a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina after he was convicted in 2021 and 2022 on child sexual abuse charges.
Abi, born Joann Kelly, said in the documentary that her father’s alleged abuse led to multiple suicide attempts and a stay in a psychiatric hospital.
R Kelly’s daughter Buku Abi, 26, accused him of sexually abusing her when she was just eight or nine years old in TVEI Streaming Network’s two-episode documentary Karma: A Daughter’s Journey.
She said she first reported her alleged abuse to her mother in 2009, when she was about 10 years old; R Kelly is seen in his mugshot from February 22, 2019.
“For a long time I was in a very difficult mental situation and I ended up in a mental hospital, a psychiatric ward, whatever you want to call it… because I got to a point in my life where several times I had tried to take my own life,” he said.
Abi said she finally confessed to her mother Andrea Kelly when she broke down crying in the car on the way to school.
Andrea admitted her to the hospital that day and remained under frequent observation for two and a half weeks.
“He was on strict suicide watch. And then for two or three months I was basically in outpatient care, so I had to go there every day,’ he said.
But that did not end her torment, and her mother noticed on another occasion, when they went to the target together, that she had self-harmed.
‘I got to a point where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died. “I didn’t care what happened to me,” he said.
“She immediately dropped everything and asked, ‘What’s going on?’ Are you OK?”.
“She was very worried, and at that moment, I broke down and had to tell her, ‘I don’t think it’s okay. I don’t think I can do this. “I don’t think I’m going to make it to live the rest of my life.”
Abi (born Joann Kelly) did not give details of the abuse she allegedly suffered, but she did say that prison was a “suitable place” for her father; In the photo from the trailer for Karma: A Daughter’s Journey.
Abi said she felt extremely guilty about the effect her deep depression had on her younger brothers Jaah and Robert Jr, now aged 23 and 22.
‘That was definitely scary. Waking up and not knowing, is my sister alive? Robert said in the documentary.
‘Now that my sisters are older and stronger, it has definitely lessened, but I still have moments where they go through something difficult.
“It’s always triggering because you never know what someone’s last straw might be, and I’ve seen them both come very close to the last straw, including my mother.”
Abi said Kelly’s alleged sexual abuse shattered her image of her father and for a long time she didn’t want to believe it happened.
“I didn’t know that even if he was a bad person he would do something to me,” he said of his father in the first episode of the documentary.
“I was too scared to tell anyone. I was too scared to tell my mom,” he admitted.
Abi declined to share details about the abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of her father in the first episode, which premiered on streaming last Friday.
However, he did say that prison was an “appropriate place” for his father to be, a conclusion he reached based on his “personal experience” with him.
She waited to tell her mother about the alleged abuse, but once she did, she and her siblings stopped spending time with their father.
He spoke about the ways in which Kelly’s alleged abuse completely altered the course of his life. In episode two, she tearfully recounted how ‘(she woke up) and he touched me.’
He spoke about the ways in which Kelly’s alleged abuse completely altered the course of his life.
Abi added that “one millisecond completely changed my entire life and changed who I was as a person and changed the shine I had and the light I used to carry.”
In the documentary, she made it clear that her visits to her father ended after she reported the alleged abuse to her mother, and said her brother Robert and sister Jaah also stopped going to see him.
But to this day, she “still struggles with it a lot.”
Abi revealed more details of her accusations in the second episode.
“I just remember waking up and him touching me,” she said through tears. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just lay there and pretended to be asleep.”
The singer said she told her mother, who also appears in the documentary, what had happened, and then the two filed a police report listing her as ‘Jane Doe.’
However, the delay between the time the alleged abuse occurred and the time Abi told her mother may have ruined her chances of getting justice.
‘They couldn’t process it because I waited too long. “So at that point in my life, I felt like I had said something for nothing,” he explained.
Abi’s mother, Drea Kelly (pictured with her ex-husband R. Kelly in the documentary) took her to the police to report the alleged crime as a ‘Jane Doe’, but they were told that Kelly could not be prosecuted because she had passed too long.
Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, said her client vehemently denied the allegations.
“His ex-wife made the same allegation years ago, and it was investigated by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and was unfounded,” he said.
“And the ‘filmmakers’, whoever they are, did not reach out to Mr. Kelly or his team to allow him to even deny these hurtful claims.”
Although Kelly avoided prison when he was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008, he was later found guilty in 2021 on all nine counts of extortion and sex trafficking in New York.
Then, in 2022, he was convicted in a federal trial held in Chicago on six of 13 counts, including charges of child pornography and obstruction of justice.
He was sentenced to 30 years in prison at his trial in New York and 20 years at the subsequent federal trial in Chicago, although the judge overseeing the latter ruled that 19 of those 20 years would be served concurrently with his earlier sentence, meaning that He has the right to prison. 31 year sentence now.
Rumors about Kelly’s alleged abuse of women and young children flourished for years, and were only exacerbated by his relationship with singer Aaliyah.
Kelly was subsequently sentenced to 31 years in prison after being found guilty at a trial in New York in 2021 and at a federal trial held in Chicago in 2022; photographed in 2017 in Austin, Texas
After working together in the studio, the two had a secret, illegal marriage in 1994. Aaliyah was only 15 years old at the time, but her age was falsely listed on the marriage certificate as 18.
During a pretrial hearing for Kelly’s subsequent case in New York, one of her attorneys admitted to a judge that they would not deny that Kelly had had sexual relations with Aaliyah while she was still a minor.
The latest allegations against R. Kelly come as rap mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is currently in federal custody and facing sex trafficking charges, as well as several civil lawsuits from women who allege he sexually assaulted them.
The allegations that swirled around R. Kelly for years were solidified in 2019 with the release of the six-hour Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly.
In the wake of the documentary, which went into detail about the numerous accusations made against him, Kelly’s record label opted to drop him.
Weeks later, he was charged with criminal offenses in Chicago.
