R. Kelly’s daughter, Buku Abi, is sharing her experiences regarding the effects of her father’s alleged sexual abuse on her mental health.
In the new TVEI Network docuseries, R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey, the 26-year-old claims that Kelly molested her when she was about 8 years old, which triggered a series of traumatic events, including multiple suicide attempts and a stay in a psychiatric hospital.
“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,” she says, “because I hit a point in my life where multiple times, I had tried to take my own life.”
Born Joann Kelly, Abi remembers reaching a breaking point while in the car on the way to school, crying and telling her mother, Andrea Kelly, that she was “not OK.”
“That day she called the hospital, and she ended up checking me in, and I didn’t leave,” Abi says.
“I was there for about two and a half weeks. I was on really hard suicide watch. And then for two, three months after that, I was in outpatient basically, so I had to go there every day.”
The singer also recalls a moment when she and Andrea — who was married to R. Kelly from 1996 to 2009 — went to Target together, and Andrea noticed that her daughter’s wrists had been cut.
“I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I didn’t care about what happened to me,” she says in the docuseries.
“My mom saw that my wrists were all cut up, and she just immediately dropped everything and was asking, ‘What’s going on? Are you OK?’ She was really worried, and in that moment, I broke down, and I had to tell her like, ‘I don’t think I’m OK. 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.’ ”
Abi expresses that her suicidal thoughts brought her a “lot of guilt,” as she recognized the effect they had on her younger siblings, Jaah, 23, and Robert Jr., 22.
“That was definitely scary,” Robert says in the show. “Waking up and not knowing, is my sister going to be alive? … Now that my sisters are older and stronger, it’s definitely subsided, but I still have my moments when they go through something hard, it’s always triggering because you never know what could be someone’s last straw, and I’ve seen both of them get very close to their last straws, including my mom.”
In February 2023, Kelly was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of child pornography and enticing minors for sex.
This conviction followed an earlier ruling on racketeering and sex trafficking charges, for which he received a 30-year sentence.
He is currently serving 19 years of his two sentences concurrently and will be eligible for release in 2045.
In the docuseries, Abi reveals that she was initially “too scared” to speak out about the incident but eventually told Andrea in 2009 when she was 10 years old.
The series explains that Abi and Andrea went to the police and filed a complaint as Jane Doe, but Abi notes, “They couldn’t prosecute him because I waited too long.”
She mentions that she is “still in the process of learning to love” and “trust” herself, while maintaining faith in her abilities.
Shortly after the show aired, Abi posted a lengthy message on Instagram outlining her motivations for the project, stating she did it for herself, her 13-month-old son Omni, her family, and her peace of mind.
“I DO NOT ‘hate’ MY FATHER. Nor do I blindly follow my mother,” she wrote. “I’m not angry. I’m not looking for revenge. I’m not looking for clout.”
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