Buku Abi, 26, said in TVEI Streaming Network’s two-episode documentary Karma: A Daughter’s Journey the singer abused her when she was eight or nine.
She said she first reported his alleged s*xual abuse to her mother in 2009 when she was about 10.
Kelly is serving a 31-year sentence at a medium-security federal prison in North Carolina after he was convicted in 2021 and 2022 of child sexual abuse charges.
Abi, born Joann Kelly, told the documentary her father’s alleged abuse triggered multiple suicide attempts and a stay in a mental hospital.
‘For a long time I was in a really hard space mentally and so I ended up in a mental hospital, a psych ward, whatever you want to call it… because I hit a point in my life where multiple times, I had tried to take my own life,’ she said.
Abi said she finally confessed to her mother Andrea Kelly when she broke down crying in the car on the way to school.
Andrea checked her into the hospital that day, and she stayed for two-and-a-half weeks under frequent observation.
‘I was on really hard suicide watch. And then for two, three months after that, I was in outpatient basically, so I had to go there every day,’ she said. ‘I just got to a point where I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care if I lived or died. I didn’t care about what happened to me.’
‘She just immediately dropped everything and was asking, “What’s going on? Are you OK?” She was really worried, and in that moment, I broke down, and I had to tell her like, “I don’t think I’m OK. I don’t think that I can do this. I don’t think that I’m going to make it through to live out the rest of my life”.’
Abi said she felt extremely guilty about the effect her deep depression had on her younger siblings Jaah and Robert Jr – now 23 and 22.
‘That was definitely scary. Waking up and not knowing, is my sister going to be alive?’ Robert said on the documentary. ‘Now that my sisters are older and stronger, it’s definitely subsided, but I still have my moments when they go through something hard. It’s always triggering because you never know what could be someone’s last straw, and I’ve seen both of them get very close to their last straws, including my mom.’
Abi said her father’s alleged sexual abuse shattered her image of her father, and for a long time, she didn’t want to believe it happened.
‘I didn’t know that even if he was a bad person that he would do something to me,’ she said of her father in the first episode of the documentary. ‘I was too scared to tell anybody. I was too scared to tell my mom.’
Kelly’s attorney Jennifer Bonjean said his client vehemently denied the allegations.
