R. Kelly's daughter Buku says he sexually abused her as a child: 'I was too scared to tell anybody'!

The R&B superstar R Kelly is currently behind bars after being charged with racketeering and sex trafficking in 2021.

While the singer spends his time in jail, he has been accused of serious allegations by his daughter Baku Abi. Baku, also known as Joann Kelly, has accused her father of sexually assaulting her when she was a child. 

She has made the shocking allegations in a new documentary Karma: 

A Daughter’s Journey for the TVEI Streaming Network. 

In the first two episodes, she accused the singer of abusing her 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,” she says in the first episode of the documentary, as per People. 

She added, “I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.” Without sharing many details, Kelly said that she believes jail is a “well-suited place” for Kelly as she knows this from her “personal experience.” 

Baku said that her mother Andrea was the first person she told.

“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.” 

Tearfully recalling the shocking experience, Joanne said she was eight or nine when Kelly abused her. 

“I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she recalled. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there, and I pretended to be asleep.” 

Baku and her mother even went on to file a complaint against him. "They couldn’t prosecute him because I waited too long. 

So at that point in my life, I felt like I said something for nothing." Kelly has denied the allegations levelled against him by his daughter. 

In a statement to People, his attorney Jennifer Bonjean said, "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.... 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."

 

The Grammy winner is currently serving a 30-year prison sentence after he was found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking.