R. Kelly’s daughter Buku Abi claims he sexually abused her

R. Kelly’s estranged daughter, Buku Abi – who called her father a “monster” in a lengthy statement following the film’s release Survivor R. Kelly documentaries in 2019 – has now claimed that the singer sexually abused her when she was 8 or 9 years old. Abi (née Joann Kelly) made these claims in a new two-part TVEI documentary titled ” R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey. “I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she says in the second episode People. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just laid there and pretended to sleep,” Kelly’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said in response People In a statement, 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,” the statement said. “And the ‘filmmakers,’ whoever they are, have not contacted Mr. Kelly or his team to even allow him to deny these hurtful allegations.”

In the documentary, Abi says that she “didn’t even want to believe” it happened and that she was initially too scared to tell anyone. She finally reported the alleged abuse to her mother Andrea Kelly in 2009 when she was ten years old. According to Abi, she and Andrea filed a police report, but no report was filed because she “waited too long.” In a 2014 court filing seeking sole custody of her and Kelly’s three children, Andrea alleged that Kelly molested a teenage girl named Jane Doe in 2009. The filing, obtained by WBEZ in 2020, alleges that Jane Doe’s mother was personally affected and shared that a DCFS caseworker “believed the events occurred” but “had no choice but to handle the matter.” Steve Greenberg, Kelly’s lawyer at the time, dismissed the claim as “100% false” to WBEZ, pointing out in a text message that it was “unfounded due to the length of time between the events and Jane Doe’s reporting of the incident.” had been “fully investigated and rejected by police and DCFS.”

Kelly’s current attorney, Bonjean, described this to her client in another statement People as “the most investigated person on the planet when it comes to allegations of child sexual abuse,” and further argues that if Abi’s allegations “had been substantiated, we would have seen them in one of his many lawsuits.” Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2023 after a trial in Chicago on charges of child pornography and luring minors for sex. By then, he had already been sentenced to 30 years in prison in a New York sex crimes case. Kelly will serve these two sentences concurrently and will be eligible for release in 2045 A daughter’s journey, Abi says that based on her “personal experience,” she thinks prison is a “well-suited place” for her father.