“I was afraid to tell anybody”- R. Kelly’s daughter claims he sexually assaulted her

• Following the 2019 Surviving R. Kelly docuseries, she has accused him of sexually abusing her when she was between 8 and 9 years old.

R. Kelly’s daughter, Abi, has called him a “monster” in a documentary series named Karma. Following the 2019 Surviving R. Kelly docuseries, she has accused him of sexually abusing her when she was between 8 and 9 years old.

The documentary, which was released on October 11, shows Abi, now 26, stating that she first told her mother, Andrea, about the abuse in 2009 when she was only 10.

“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 he would do something to me,” she says in the documentary, the first episode of which is streaming now.

“I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.”

Though Abi, who was born Joann Kelly, does not go into detail about the alleged abuse in the first episode, she says that she believes jail is a “well-suited place” for Kelly, 57, to be, as she knows from her “personal experience.”

“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,” she says. “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.”

Detailing the alleged abuse, which she says happened when she was 8 or 9, Abi said, “I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she recalls, crying. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there, and I pretended to be asleep.”

Buku says she eventually told her mother what happened, and they went to the police and filed a complaint as “Jane Doe,” but, she adds in the documentary, “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.”

In a statement to People, Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said, “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.”

In February 2023, Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Chicago for charges related to child pornography and enticing minors for sexual purposes. The year before, he got a 30-year sentence in New York for racketeering and sex trafficking. He is currently serving 19 years of both sentences together and will be eligible for release in 2045.