Claiming that it happened when she was 8 or 9 years old, Abi says in the new documentary R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey, “I hit a point in my life where multiple times, I had tried to take my own life.”
R. Kelly’s daughter Buku Abi, born Joann Kelly, has opened up in the documentary R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey about alleged sexual abuse she claims she endured at the hands of her father, and how it’s impacted her mental health.
Abi alleges in the new documentary project for TVEI Network, released on Friday, October 11, that the “Ignition” singer molested her when she was just eight or nine years old.
“I really feel like that one-millisecond completely just changed my whole life, changed who I was as a person,” Abi emotionally states in the film. “For a long time, I didn’t want to believe that it happened. I didn’t know, even if he was a bad person, that he would do something like this to me.”
Abi alleged waking up in the middle of the night to her father “touching” her inappropriately, saying, per E! News, that in that moment, she “didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there and I pretended to be sleep.”
The 26-year-old said in the documentary that she first reported the alleged abuse to her mother, Andrea Kelly, when she was 10 years old. She said they then went to the police to file a complaint, but “they couldn’t prosecute him because I waited too long.”
In discussing the toll the alleged abuse had on her mental health, Abi said that the trauma led to multiple suicide attempts and a stay in a psychiatric hospital, per People.
She opened up about the moment she was admitted to a mental health facility, saying that it happened after she broke down and told her mother she was “not okay” on the way to school one day.
“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,” stated Abi. “I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore,” she said in the documentary. “I didn’t care if I lived or died. I didn’t care about what happened to me.”
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Abi said that she stayed at the facility for about two and a half weeks on “really hard suicide watch.” For the next few months, she was “in outpatient basically,” meaning she wasn’t staying there, but still had to check in every day.
In another moment, Abi recalled a difficult conversation she had with her mother later at a Target store when Andrea noticed evidence of self-harm.
“My mom saw that my wrists were all cut up. She just immediately dropped everything and was asking, ‘What’s going on? Are you okay?’” Abi recalled. “She was really worried, and in that moment, I broke down, and I had to tell her like, ‘I don’t think I’m okay. 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.’”
Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bojean said in a statement to People that the singer denies all sexual abuse allegations, including those made by Abi in the documentary.
“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,” the statement read. “The ‘film makers,’ whoever they are, did not reach out to Mr. Kelly or his team to even allow him to deny these hurtful claims.”
Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison in February 2023 after convictions on three counts related to child pornography and three related to child enticement. He had previously been convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking charges, receiving 30 years in 2021. He is serving 19 years of his sentences concurrently and will be eligible for release in 2045.
R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey is now streaming on TVEI Network.
If you or someone you know needs help, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.
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