One of R. Kelly’s daughters has publicly accused the convicted felon of sexually abusing her during her childhood.
She revealed that she first reported his alleged misconduct to her mother in 2009 when she was around 10 years old.
R. Kelly, whose full name is Robert Kelly, is currently serving a 31-year sentence at a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina after being convicted in 2021 and 2022 on multiple child sexual abuse charges.
DailyMail.com has reached out to his attorney for comment.
“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, he would do something to me,” Abi said of her father in the first episode of the documentary, as reported by People.
“I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom,” she admitted.
Abi, who was born Joann Kelly, chose not to share specific details about the abuse she allegedly endured at the hands of her father in the first episode, which premiered for streaming on Friday. However, she expressed that prison was a “well-suited place” for her father, a conclusion she reached based on her “personal experience” with him.
She discussed how Kelly’s alleged abuse drastically altered the course of her life. Abi stated that “one millisecond completely 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.”
In the documentary, she clarified that her visitations with her father ceased after she reported the alleged abuse to her mother, and noted that her brother Robert and sister Jaah also stopped visiting him.
However, she admitted that to this day, she “still struggles with it a lot.”
Abi disclosed more details of her accusations in the second episode, recalling, “I just remember waking up to him touching me,” as she recounted her experience in tears. “And I didn’t know what to do, so I just kind of laid there and pretended to be asleep.”
The singer stated that she informed her mother, Drea Kelly—who is also featured in the documentary—about the incident, and the two subsequently filed a police complaint listing her as a “Jane Doe.”
However, she noted that the delay between when the alleged abuse occurred and when she informed her mother may have undermined their chances of achieving justice.
“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,” she explained.
In a statement to People, Kelly’s attorney, Jennifer Bonjean, responded, “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… The ‘filmmakers,’ whoever they are, did not reach out to Mr. Kelly or his team to even allow him to deny these hurtful claims.”
Although Kelly evaded prison when he was acquitted of child pornography charges in 2008, he was later convicted in 2021 of all nine racketeering and sex trafficking charges in New York.
In 2022, Kelly was convicted in a federal trial held in Chicago on six out of 13 charges, including counts of child pornography and obstruction of justice. He received a 30-year sentence in his New York trial and an additional 20 years in the subsequent Chicago federal trial. However, the judge presiding over the latter determined that 19 of those 20 years would be served concurrently with his earlier sentence, resulting in an effective sentence of 31 years.
Rumors regarding Kelly’s alleged abuse of women and young children persisted for years, a situation exacerbated by his relationship with the singer Aaliyah.
