“I was too afraid to tell anyone”

Buku Abi tells her story in the new documentary “R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey is now airing on the TVEI Streaming Network

R. Kelly’s daughter Buku Abi speaks publicly for the first time about the alleged abuse she suffered at the hands of her father during her childhood.

The final minutes of TVEI Streaming Network’s new two-part documentary Karma: A Daughter’s Journeywhich premiered today, claims 26-year-old Abi was abused by the singer as a child and first reported it to her mother Andrea in 2009 when she was 10 years old.

“He was my everything. For a long time I didn’t even want to believe it happened. “I didn’t know he would do something to me even if he was a bad person,” she says in the documentary, the first episode of which is now streaming. “I was too scared to tell anyone. I was too afraid to tell my mother.”

Although Abi, who was born Joann Kelly, doesn’t elaborate on the alleged abuse in the first episode, she says she believes prison is a “well-suited place” for Kelly, 57, as she believes of her knows “personal experience.”

“I really feel like that one millisecond completely changed my entire life and who I was as a person and how the shine that I had and the light that I carried was changed,” she says. “After I told my mother, I stopped going there; my brother [Robert] and sister [Jaah]We didn’t go there anymore. And even up to now I have a lot of trouble with it.”

The episode ends with information about delayed disclosure, explaining that many victims of child sexual abuse wait years or decades to reveal what happened to them.

Related: R. Kelly’s Daughter Speaks Out in Upcoming Documentary: ‘I Won’t Take My Son to Jail to Meet His Grandpa’

In the second episode, Buku goes into more detail about the alleged abuse, which she says happened when she was eight or nine years old. “I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she recalls, crying. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just laid there and pretended to be asleep.”

Buku says she eventually told her mother what happened and they went to the police and filed a report under the name “Jane Doe,” but she adds in the documentary, “They couldn’t prosecute him because I waited too long. So at a certain point in my life I felt like I had 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, 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.”

In February 2023, Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison in Chicago for child pornography and enticing minors to have sex. The year before, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for extortion and sex trafficking in New York. He is currently serving 19 years of his two sentences concurrently and is eligible for release in 2045.

The “Ignition (Remix)” singer was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008 after decades of allegations leveled against him, PEOPLE previously reported.

R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey follows his family as they try to move on with their lives after his arrest and conviction, and Abi prepares to welcome a child of his own. Kelly’s ex-wife Andrea – who divorced the singer in 2009 and also accused him of abuse – and their children Jaah, 23, and Robert, 22, also appear in the documentary, as do Andrea’s parents Clifford and Melissa.

Part 1 of the series contains Andrea’s harrowing account of the night she left Kelly for good and took her three children from their shared home to their father Clifford, whom the children had never met before due to Kelly’s allegedly controlling behavior.

Abi says life in her father’s shadow has been difficult and she has struggled with suicidal thoughts.

“I just got to the point where I didn’t care. I didn’t care whether I lived or died,” she says. “I remember my mom and I went to Target one day and I had to use the bathroom. We went to the bathroom and she came out and I was washing my hands and she saw that my wrists were all cut and she immediately dropped everything and asked, ‘What’s wrong? Are you okay?’ “

“She was really worried and at that moment I broke down and had to tell her, ‘I don’t think I’m OK. I don’t think I can do this. I don’t believe.’ that I will manage to live out the rest of my life.’ ”

Meanwhile, all parties interviewed in the documentary are satisfied with Kelly’s long prison sentence.

“If you don’t want to go to prison, don’t do anything that will lock you up,” Robert Jr. says, while Jaah adds, “You make your bed, you lie in it.”

R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey is now streaming on TVEI Streaming Network.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453 or visit www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available around the clock in more than 170 languages.

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Read the original article on People.