Buku Abi, also known as Joann Kelly, has alleged that her father, disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly, sexually abused her as a child in a new documentary.
“For a long time I did not even want to believe that it happened,” a tearful Abi says in “R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey,” now streaming on TVEI. “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. Changed the sparkle I had and the light that I used to carry.”
Kelly has denied the allegations through an attorney.
Abi shares her story over the course of the two-part documentary directed by Venessa Renee, which also includes interviews with her mother Drea Kelly, siblings Jaah Kelly and Robert Kelly Jr. and her grandparents.
“He’s a monster,” Abi’s grandmother Melissa Lee says of R. Kelly in the first installment. “There’s no other word for him, he’s a monster. What he has done to those kids, what he has done to our daughter. … He should not live. I think putting him in jail is too easy.”
Kelly is currently serving time after being convicted in 2021 for sex trafficking and racketeering. In 2023, his initial 30-year sentence was extended to 31 years following his conviction on separate child pornography and enticement charges. The initial federal charges against Kelly were levied nearly in tandem with the release of the 2019 Lifetime documentary series, “Surviving R. Kelly,” which detailed decades of alleged sexual abuse by the singer and featured multiple accusers.
“R. Kelly’s Karma” opens with Abi stating that she “100% feel[s] like he deserves to be in jail.”
“All I know is what happened to me,” Abi later expands in the documentary. “All I know is what happened to my mom. All I know is what happened to my brother and sister. And, because of that, I feel like as a family, we all know why he’s in jail.”
R. Kelly at a 2019 hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court building in Chicago.
(Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune / Associated Press)
According to Abi, her father “meant the world to [her]” as a child. But everything changed one night when Kelly was throwing a party and Abi decided to sleep in the office instead of her room so she could be closer to him and the evening’s events.
“I just remember waking up to him touching me,” says Abi, who said the incident occurred when she was 8 or 9. “I didn’t know what to do so I just kind of laid there and I pretended to be asleep.”
She adds, “I was too scared to tell anybody. It was hard to even accept that it happened. For a long time I just tried to put it somewhere else. But it got to a point where it was too much. It was too much to not talk about. It was too much to not deal with. So I had to tell my mom. When I told her, it completely broke her heart.”
The documentary details how Abi reported the abuse to her mother in 2009, when she was 10 years old. According to court documents that the filmmakers obtained when Kelly’s divorce papers were unsealed in 2019, the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services investigated Kelly for allegedly molesting a preteen Jane Doe in 2009. The filing also stated that the “caseworker believed that the abuse occurred, but because of the length of time between the abuse and Jane Doe’s reporting the incident, the charges were dropped.”
Abi, who recalls talking to various officials after coming forward to her mother about the abuse, says it was difficult because it felt like she spoke up back then “for nothing.”
“They basically couldn’t prosecute him because I waited too long,” says Abi. “I felt like it was a waste. I felt like I was putting my mom through so much for nothing.”
Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean addressed Abi’s allegations in a statement to People.
“Mr. Kelly vehemently denies these allegations,” said Bonjean. “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.”
In addition to the allegations, “R. Kelly’s Karma” features Abi and her siblings sharing what they remember about fleeing their childhood home with their mother and how they have been affected by R. Kelly’s actions.
“I don’t want to resemble him in any way,” says Robert Kelly Jr.
Abi, who gave birth to her first child over the course of filming the documentary, also gets candid about recording her duet with Kelly (“Wanna Be There”) when she was younger, her struggles with self-harm and her previous miscarriage, as well as more hopeful notes for her family’s future.
“Me, my brother and sister, we are going to change the narrative about the last name Kelly,” says Abi. “For my son, that name is going to be something to be proud of. It’s going to be something that he’s going to wear with honor.”
