R. Kelly's Daughter Buku Abi Speaks Out About Alleged Childhood Abuse

R. Kelly's daughter Buku Abi has come forward with allegations of childhood abuse by her father, R. Kelly, in a new documentary, "R. Kelly's Karma: A Daughter's Journey," which premiered on TVEI Streaming Network. In the documentary, Abi, 26, claims that Kelly, 57, abused her as a child, and she first reported it to her mother, Andrea, when she was 10 years old. "He was my everything. For a long time, I didn’t even want to believe that it happened. I didn’t know that even if he was a bad person that he would do something to me," Abi says in the documentary. "I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom."

Abi, who was born Joann Kelly, does not go into detail about the alleged abuse in the first episode, but says that she believes jail is a "well-suited place" for Kelly, 57, to be, as she knows from her "personal experience." "I really feel like that one millisecond completely just changed my whole life and changed who I was as a person and changed the sparkle I had and the light I used to carry," she says. "After I told my mom, I didn’t go over there anymore; my brother [Robert] and sister [Jaah], we didn’t go over there anymore. And even up until now I struggle with it a lot."

The documentary also features Andrea's harrowing account of the night she left Kelly for good, and took her three children out of the home they shared to her father Clifford, whom the kids had never met before due to Kelly's alleged controlling behavior.

Abi says life in their father's shadow was difficult, and she struggled with suicidal thoughts. "I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died," she says. "I remember one day, my mom and I, we went to Target 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 up, and she just immediately dropped everything, and she was asking like, ‘What’s going on? Are you OK?’ "

Abi's allegations come after Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison on charges of child pornography and enticement of minors for sex in February 2023. He is currently serving 19 years of his two sentences concurrently, and he will be eligible for release in 2045.

The documentary also features interviews with Kelly's ex-wife Andrea, their children Jaah, 23, and Robert, 22, and Andrea's parents Clifford and Melissa. All parties interviewed in the doc say they're satisfied with Kelly's lengthy prison sentence.