R. Kelly’s daughter says he sexually abused her as a child

R. Kelly is currently in prison and will likely remain there for some time as he is currently serving a 31-year sentence for racketeering and production of child pornography. And while his legal team recently made headlines for appealing the latter charge (and the roughly two decades it added to his sentence), this week’s latest news about the rapper may not help: Kelly’s daughter, Joann Kelly (also known as Buku Abi, whose name is spelled as Joanne in the trailer below) is now appearing in a documentary in which she claims that Kelly sexually abused her as a child.

The younger Kelly appeared in R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journeya new two-part documentary that will air on the small independent streaming network TVEI. Featuring appearances by Joann, her brother Robert Jr. and her mother Drea (who also appeared in 2019). Survivor R. Kellythe documentaries that helped change the consensus about Kelly), the documentary features Joann Kelly’s allegations that her father sexually abused her. “For a long time,” she says, “I didn’t even want to believe it happened. I didn’t know he would hurt me even if he was a bad person. I was too scared to tell anyone. I was too scared to tell my mom.” Kelly goes on to say that when she was 8 or 9 years old, she woke up to her father touching her inappropriately and she pretended to be asleep. She first told her mother about the abuse when she was 10, she says in the documentary. However, when the family reported the incident, authorities told them it had been too long since it happened.

Per PeopleKelly’s attorney responded to the allegations in the documentary with a denial statement: “Mr. Kelly vehemently denies these allegations. His ex-wife made the same claim years ago, which was investigated by the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services and found to be unfounded. And the “filmmakers,” whoever they are, have not contacted Mr. Kelly or his team to even allow him to deny these hurtful allegations.”

[via THR]