R. Kelly’s Daughter Says He Sexually Abused Her As a Child
R. Kelly’s daughter, Buku Abi, has accused her father of sexually abusing her as a child. Abi made the allegation in a new docuseries called R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey, which premiered Friday on the TVEI streaming network. In the doc, Abi claims that she waited a long time to tell her mother, Andrea Kelly, about the alleged abuse, eventually coming forward in 2009 at age 10.
“He was my everything. For a long time, I didn’t even want to believe that it happened,” Abi, 26, said, per a People report. “I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.”
“I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she said of her father, who she claims abused her when she was 8 or 9 years old. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there, and I pretended to be asleep.”
When she told her mother about the incident, they went to the police to file a complaint as a Jane Doe, but Abi explained that she was unable to press charges against her father. “They couldn’t prosecute him because I waited too long. So at that point in my life, I felt like I said something for nothing,” she said in the documentary.
When reached for comment, R. Kelly’s lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, told the Cut that R. Kelly “vehemently denies” his daughter’s allegations. Bonjean also claimed that “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.”
R. Kelly is currently serving two concurrent sentences on federal charges that include producing child pornography, coercing minors into sex, racketeering, sex trafficking, bribery, and sexual abuse. Back in 2019, following the release of the Surviving R. Kelly documentary, Abi shared a statement disavowing her father.
“To the people who feel that I should be speaking up / against everything is going on right now, I just want you all to understand that devastated is an understatement for what I feel currently. I do apologize if my silence to all that is happening comes off as careless,” she wrote. “My choice not to speak on him and what he does is for my peace of mind. The same monster you all confronting me about is my father. I am well aware of who and what he is. I grew up in that house.”
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