Joann “Buku Abi” Kelly, daughter of embattled singer, R. Kelly, who recently called him a monster has spilt more about her relationship with her father.
Joann Kelly made her first TV appearance on Good Morning Britain alongside her mother and R.Kelly’s ex-wife Andrea Kelly, aka Drea. During the show, Joann explained what life was like growing up inside the sex ‘cult’ house.
Speaking of the allegations against her father, Joann said:
“I am very torn at the end of the day he is still family and he is still my blood and yes I still love my father.
It is very hard to digest. As a lot of people know as far as the reaction to what is happening that he is still my father.
It is a hard situation. My heart is torn into two separate places.
I don’t want to confirm or deny anything that these women have said about my father.
As I have said I know him he is my father and I grew up in that house with my father. I spent years in that house it is very painful.
It is painful to see all these people affected by this man who is my father.”
Joann further said she hasn’t seen her father for a few years and added that he has made no efforts to contact her.
“At the end of the day you have to be responsible for your actions. If my father is a toxic person then we have to love him from a distance.
There is no love lost and I have to separate myself.”
Joann’s mother Drea explained that during her marriage to R Kelly she saw two different sides to him. She said that he opened up to her about child abuse that he suffered and how he had experienced domestic violence.
She said:
He perpetrated so much misery on to so many young women and girls. I do not portray sympathy I portray understanding.
I am a firm believer that if you have been abused, it does not give you a free pass to be an abuser.
It is devastating. I sit here as a survivor and a mother to his children. It is a difficult position for me to be in but being a mother to his children I could not say anything.
My truth is what I survived he was abusive to me verbally, physically and sexually and now he is financially abusing me.
I can only speak to my story and ring true to what I know, and something has to be done.
