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JoAnn Kelly has publicly accused her father R. Kelly of sexually abusing her as a child.
Kelly, better known as Buku Abi, opened up about the disturbing allegations in the TVEI Network's new documentary “Karma: A Daughter’s Journey," which debuted on Friday, October 11. Towards the end of the two-episode premiere, Abi claimed her dad molested her when she was about 8 or 9 years old.
"I just remember waking up to him touching me," she said while crying, according to People. "And I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there, and I pretended to be asleep."
“He was my everything. For a long time, I didn’t even want to believe that it happened," she said in the first episode. "I didn’t know that even if he was a bad person that he would do something to me. I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.”
Buku Abi reportedly told her mother Drea Kelly about the incident in 2009. They filed a complaint against the singer under "Jane Doe," however, the statute of limitation had already expired. In the documentary, Kelly's ex-wife shamed him and supported her daughter's claims. Shortly after the documentary debuted, Kelly's attorney flat-out denied the allegations.
"Mr. Kelly vehemently denies these allegations," his attorney Jennifer Bonjean told TMZ. "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."
R. Kelly is currently serving out his 20-year prison sentence at a facility in North Carolina after he was convicted of sex crimes involving minors in Chicago and racketeering charges in New York. His legal team is actively trying to appeal his Chicago conviction to the Supreme Court.