R. Kelly is strongly denying his daughter’s allegation of sexual abuse that she recently made public in the documentary Karma: A Daughter’s Journey — and the singer’s attorney implied that Buku Abi’s recollections may be “distorted and contaminated.”
Lawyer Jennifer Bonjean appeared on News Nation’s Banfield on Friday (October 11), and gave host Ashleigh Banfield the rundown.
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Bonjean began by repeating what she has said elsewhere: that a version of Abi’s allegation was made by her mother some time ago.
“The allegation was investigated by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services,” Bonjean said. “[R. Kelly] was under criminal investigation at the time. He’s probably the most highly-investigated individual on the planet when it comes to these types of claims. The Illinois DCFS determined that the allegation was unfounded many years ago.
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“[H]e certainly denies it, and it’s our position that, if there was any merit to the claims, certainly charges would have been brought,” she continued.
As for why Abi would make the accusation in the first place, Bonjean had some ideas.
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“We know that people sometimes come to believe things based on having distorted and contaminated memories, particularly children, and this can be done by their mothers,” she said. “This is not junk science. This stuff exists.
“I don’t know what her motivation is, I don’t know what’s going through her brain… Just because someone says it’s true, and people cry, does not necessarily mean it has merit.”
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The attorney said she hadn’t spoken to Kelly about any possible legal rejoinder to his daughter’s claim.
“He is very upset. He’s angry,” she continued. “But of course, he loves his children. We haven’t decided what legal action we would take in response to this, but it’s not really a conversation. He’s mourning right now.”
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Check out Bonjean’s interview below.
Per TMZ, Karma: A Daughter’s Journey finds Abi (born Joanne Kelly) sharing details about an incident she says occurred when she was around the age of eight or nine.
The now 26-year-old claims that she woke up to find R. Kelly touching her and pretended to be asleep. In a trailer for the documentary, Abi is heard alluding to the life-shattering moment.
“He was my everything. For a long time, I didn’t even wanna believe that it happened,” she says while crying. “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.
Elsewhere in the trailer — which also features her mother and her brother, Robert Kelly Jr. — Buku Abi says that she will not be taking her son to visit her father and sheds more light on their fractured relationship, which he has previously blamed on his ex-wife.
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“Nobody wants to be the child of the father that is out here hurting women and children,” she says, later adding, “He knows exactly why we can’t have the relationship that we would have liked to have with him.”
