R. Kelly’s daughter, Joann Kelly, also known as Buku Abi, is opening up about the impact her father’s crimes have had on her.
“Nobody wants to be the child of the father that is out here hurting women and children,” Joann, 26, says in the trailer for the upcoming documentary R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey. “He knows exactly why we can’t have the relationship that we would’ve liked to have with him.”
Elsewhere in the teaser, Joann breaks down crying.
“He was my everything,” she says through tears. “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. I really feel like that one millisecond completely just changed my whole life.” The trailer does not specify what happened to Joann in “that one millisecond.”
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R. Kelly, 57, was found guilty of sexual abuse, sex trafficking, sexual exploitation of a child and racketeering in 2021. The following year, he was convicted for production of child pornography. The rapper began serving his combined 31-year prison sentence in 2023.
In July, R. Kelly asked the United States Supreme Court to overturn his 2022 conviction of child pornography and engaging in sex with a minor, claiming that the charges exceeded the statute of limitations. (The 2003 PROTECT Act ensures there is no statute of limitations against child sex crimes.)
R. Kelly’s Karma is not the first film to explore the musician’s crimes. The 2019 Lifetime documentary Surviving R. Kelly sparked new investigations that ultimately led to Kelly being arrested and charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse in February 2019. Joann reacted to the documentary’s claims via her Instagram Story in January 2019.
“To the people that feel I should be speaking up/against everything that is going on right now, I just want you all to understand that devastated is an understatement for all that I feel currently,” she wrote at the time. “I pray for all the families & women who have been affected by my father’s actions. Trust, I have been deeply affected by all of this.”
While Joann said it was “difficult to process” all the revelations about her father, she noted that it had “been years since my siblings and I have seen or have spoken to him” and “my mother, siblings and I would never condone, support or be a part of ANYTHING negative he has done.”
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Joann also called R. Kelly a “monster” and said she didn’t need online trolls to tell her that. “I am well aware of who and what he is. I grew up in that house,” she wrote.
R. Kelly shares Joann, Jaah, 24, and Robert Kelly Jr., 22, with ex-wife Drea Kelly. Drea, 50, Jaah and Robert all participated in R. Kelly’s Karma alongside Joann.
“Just because you’re not a good husband doesn’t mean you can’t be a good father. And the fact that he didn’t even try,” Drea, who was married to R. Kelly from 1996 to 2009, says in the trailer. “What he did to me, he did to me. But you didn’t have to do it to my damn kids.”
Joann is now a mother herself, and she plans to be candid with her young son about R. Kelly’s history.
“If my son asks questions, I’m gonna be as truthful as possible,” she says in the documentary trailer. “But I’m not gonna be taking my son to a prison to visit his grandfather.”
R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Story premieres on the TVEI streaming platform Friday, October 11.
