R. Kelly‘s daughter Buku Abi has teased that she is set to unveil a “heartbreaking secret” in a new documentary about her sex predator father.
R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey is scheduled to air on streaming service TVEI on October 11 and will feature interviews with Buku (real name Joanne Kelly), as well as the singer’s ex-wife Drea and son Robert Kelly Jr.
In the trailer for the documentary, an emotional Buku says: “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.”
She adds: “Nobody wants to be the child of the father that is out here hurting women and children.”
Drea also comments in the trailer: “What he did to me, he did to me, but you didn’t have to do it to my kids.”
An Instagram post promoting the documentary says that Buku “bravely reveals a heartbreaking secret that shattered her childhood,” while the film itself “pulls back the curtain on the dark reality of growing up in the shadow of one of music’s most notorious figures.”
The disgraced R&B legend has petitioned the United States Supreme Court in July to throw out his convictions based on the fact that his alleged crimes occurred decades ago and the charges therefore fall outside the statute of limitations.
Because Kelly was convicted for incidents dating back to the mid 1990s, the singer’s team argued that the PROTECT Act, which he was charged with violating, doesn’t apply to his case since it didn’t become a law until 2003 — despite prosecutors successfully arguing that the law’s statue of limitations are indefinite.
Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said that the Act’s expanded statute of limitations doesn’t apply to the charges against her client.
The Supreme Court will reportedly decide whether to hear the appeal in the coming months.
Back in 2022, a grand jury found R. Kelly guilty on six of the 13 federal charges he was facing, which included three child pornography charges for sexually abusing four girls — three of whom were minors.They also found the Chicago native guilty of making videos of himself sexually assaulting his 14-year-old goddaughter, which resulted in another three charges for producing sex tapes with a minor.
