- R. Kelly’s daughter shares her close encounter with suicide after her father allegedly molested her as a child.
- In TVEI Streaming Network’s documentary Karma: A Daughter’s Journey, 26-year-old Buku Abi shares her experience of being abused by a disgraced singer when she was eight or nine.
- She reported the alleged sexual abuse to her mother at the age of 10 in 2009.
- Kelly, convicted of child sexual abuse in 2021 and 2022, is serving a 31-year sentence at a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina.
R. Kelly’s daughter has shared her harrowing experience of nearly taking her own life following allegations of molestation by her father during her childhood.
Buku Abi, 26, recounted her story in the two-part documentary “Karma: A Daughter’s Journey” on TVEI Streaming Network, revealing that the disgraced singer allegedly abused her when she was around eight or nine years old.
She disclosed that she first informed her mother about the alleged sexual abuse in 2009, when she was approximately ten years old.
Currently, Kelly is serving a 31-year sentence in a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina after being convicted of child sexual abuse charges in 2021 and 2022.
In the documentary, Abi, whose birth name is Joann Kelly, explained that the alleged abuse led to several suicide attempts and a subsequent stay in a mental health facility.
‘For a long time I was in a really hard space mentally and so I ended up in a mental hospital, a psych ward, whatever you want to call it… because I hit a point in my life where multiple times, I had tried to take my own life,’ she said.
Abi recounted a pivotal moment when she broke down in tears in the car on the way to school, ultimately confessing to her mother, Andrea Kelly. That same day, Andrea arranged for her to be admitted to the hospital, where she remained for two and a half weeks under close supervision.
‘I was on really hard suicide watch. And then for two, three months after that, I was in outpatient basically, so I had to go there every day,’ she said.
However, her struggles did not cease there; her mother later observed signs of self-harm during a shopping trip to Target.
‘I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I didn’t care about what happened to me,’ she said.
‘She just immediately dropped everything and was asking, “What’s going on? Are you OK?”
‘She was really worried, and in that moment, I broke down, and I had to tell her like, “I don’t think I’m OK. I don’t think that I can do this. I don’t think that I’m going to make it through to live out the rest of my life”.’
Abi expressed profound guilt regarding the impact her severe depression had on her younger siblings, Jaah and Robert Jr., who are now 23 and 22 years old.
Robert recounted in the documentary, “.‘That was definitely scary. Waking up and not knowing, is my sister going to be alive?’.”
‘Now that my sisters are older and stronger, it’s definitely subsided, but I still have my moments when they go through something hard.‘It’s always triggering because you never know what could be someone’s last straw, and I’ve seen both of them get very close to their last straws, including my mom.’
Abi revealed that the alleged sexual abuse by Kelly profoundly altered her perception of her father, leading her to struggle with accepting the reality of the situation for an extended period.
‘I didn’t know that even if he was a bad person that he would do something to me,” she reflected on her father during the documentary’s first episode.
‘I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom,’ she admitted.
While Abi chose not to disclose specific details regarding the abuse she reportedly endured at the hands of her father in the premiere episode, which became available for streaming last Friday, she did assert that prison was a “well-suited place” for him, a judgment she reached based on her “personal experience” with him.
