R. Kelly's Daughter: He Abused Me, Too

When Lifetime's 2019 docuseries on R. Kelly debuted, the disgraced R&B singer's oldest daughter posted a message online noting she was "devastated" for "all the families & [women] who have been affected by my father's actions." She added, "I am well aware of who and what he is. I grew up in that house." Now, 26-year-old Buku Abi (born Joann Kelly) has dropped her own bomb, revealing in a new documentary that her father sexually abused her when she was a child, reports the Washington Post.

• The incident: In TVEI's R. Kelly's Karma: A Daughter's Journey, Abi said the abuse happened when she was 8 or 9, during a party her father was throwing at their home. She said she'd fallen asleep in his office and woke up in the middle of the night to find him touching her. "I didn't know what to do, so I just kind of laid there and pretended to be [asleep]," she recalled.

• Repercussions: Abi says that in 2009 she told her mom, R. Kelly's now-ex-wife Andrea Kelly, what had happened, and the two went to police together. However, as Abi explains in the documentary, "They couldn't prosecute him because I waited too long [to report]," per People. "So at that point in my life, I felt like I said something for nothing." The Illinois Department of Children & Family Services determined Abi's accusation was "unfounded" due to the length of time that had passed, per an unsealed court filing cited by the Post.
• R. Kelly: The legal team for the singer—now serving two concurrent decades-long prison sentences for racketeering, sex trafficking, child pornography, and child sex abuse—is hitting back at Abi's allegations, saying he "vehemently denies" them, per People. "His ex-wife made the same allegation years ago, and it was investigated ... and was unfounded," attorney Jennifer Bonjean says in a statement. "And the 'filmmakers,' whoever they are, did not reach out to Mr. Kelly or his team to even allow him to deny these hurtful claims."
• Abi today: "For a long time, I didn't even want to believe that it happened," Abi said in the film, noting she'd been too afraid to tell anyone previously. "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 adds in an Instagram post from Friday, on why she's coming forward now: "I did it for me, I did it for my son. I did it for my peace of mind."

(More R. Kelly stories.)