R. Kelly’s Daughter Claims Singer Sexually Abused Her As A Child: “I Didn’t Even Want To Believe That It Happened”
R. Kelly has been convicted of more than enough to be “canceled” by today’s standards, but a new piece of information may have the public looking for an even more severe word.
The crooner’s daughter, Buku Abi, revealed a dark childhood secret involving her father in the new TVEI documentary R Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey.
The two-episode documentary premiered this past Friday (Oct. 11) and covered his ex-wife Andrea Kelly and their children Buku, Robert, and Jaah as they move on with their lives following the controversial singer’s convictions, arrest, and sentencing. Andrea’s parents, Clifford and Melissa, are also featured in the documentary, but Buku’s contributions, which she alluded to in the promotional trailer, may be the most salient.
She reveals in the first episode that she was abused, but did not go into grave detail. In the second episode, she opens up more and says that when she was eight or nine years old, she woke up to the “Same Girl” singer inappropriately touching her. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there, and I pretended to be asleep,” 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.”
“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,” Buku Abi said of the traumatic experience. “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.”
Abi did not tell her mother until she was 10 years old, which led to them eventually going to the police and filing a report under “Jane Doe.” However, authorities were unable to prosecute him because they “waited too long,” so she felt as though she “said something for nothing.”
Another important part of the documentary was the discussion on “delayed disclosure,” which is common for victims of sexual abuse. They often wait years or even decades to reveal what happened to them because they have to process it on their own, especially when it was done by someone close to them, which adds a layer of guilt to the equation.
Unfortunately, statutes of limitations and other laws often prevent victims from holding their abusers accountable once they’ve healed enough to speak up.
Buku Abi also described how what she endured led to her ideating suicide. “I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died,” she said. “I remember one day, my mom and I, we went to Target and I had to use the bathroom. We went to the bathroom and she came out and I was washing my hands and she saw that my wrists were all cut up, and she just immediately dropped everything, and she was asking like, ‘What’s going on? Are you OK?’”
Despite struggling with what happened to her to this day, she does believe that jail is a “well-suited place” for R. Kelly, who was convicted of racketeering, sex trafficking, child pornography, and more. His other children agreed, with Robert Jr. saying “If you don’t want to go to jail, don’t do sh*t that gets you locked up.” Jaah added his own take with the commonly used phrase “You make your bed, you lay in it.”
The imprisoned artist’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, shared a statement with PEOPLE that denied Abi’s allegations. “Mr. Kelly vehemently denies these allegations,” she wrote. “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.”
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