R. Kelly’s daughter takes exception to his claim that her mother brainwashed her and her siblings into a strained relationship with their imprisoned father.
“When it comes to him feeling as if my mom has brainwashed us, I feel like it’s bulls–t,” 26-year-old Buku Abi says in the new two-part docuseries “Karma: A Daughter’s Journey,” which premiered on Friday. “He knows exactly why we can’t have the relationship that we would’ve liked to have with him.”
According to TMZ, after Abi called her dad a “monster” in the 2019 documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” sources said the singer felt his daughter’s views of him were manipulated by her mom, Andrea Kelly.
But according to Abi, along with suffering her own abuse, she witnessed her father abusing her mother over the course of their relationship and formed her own conclusions.
“I don’t understand how you could put your hands on my mother and then expect me to be able to have the same relationship with you,” she says in the new doc, according to People.
Abi also claims in the documentary that she was sexually abused by her father when she was 8 or 9 years old.
“I just remember waking up to him touching me,” she tearfully explains in the second episode. “I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there, and I pretended to be asleep.”
She eventually told her mother what happened and the two went to police, but she says “they couldn’t prosecute him because [she] waited too long.”
Kelly’s lawyer has refuted the claims made against him in the doc and said the allegations would have already been pursued if there was any evidence.
“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,” Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean told People on Friday.
It’s unlikely Abi will see her 57-year-old dad again any time soon, if ever again. A New York City jury sentenced the “serial predator” to 30 years in prison in 2022 for racketeering and sex trafficking. He was subsequently convicted in Chicago for sex crimes involving children and sentenced to 20 years.
