Joann Kelly, the 26-year-old daughter of R. Kelly, has expressed her desire to keep her son away from the fallen R&B singer. In a new documentary titled “R. Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey,” Joann opened up about the profound impact her father’s sex crime convictions have had on her life.
“Nobody wants to be the child of the father that is out here hurting women and children,” Joann said. “He knows exactly why we can’t have the relationship that we would have liked to have with him.”
“He was my everything,” she added tearfully. “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.”
Joann experienced a sudden upheaval in her life following her father’s conviction, as reported by the New York Post.
“I really feel like that one millisecond completely just changed my whole life,” she said.
She has therefore decided that she will never take her son to visit Kelly in prison.
“If my son asks questions, I’m going to be as truthful as possible,” she shared. “And I will not be taking my son to prison to meet his grandfather.”
The documentary’s trailer also features Drea, 50, Joann’s mother and Kelly’s ex-wife.
“Just because you’re not a good husband, doesn’t mean you can’t be a good father,” Drea said of Kelly, noting that “he didn’t even try.”
“What he did to me, he did to me. But you didn’t have to do it to my damn kids.”
The documentary will feature interviews with Joann’s siblings, Jaah Kelly and Robert Kelly Jr.
It will explore the impact of their father’s legal troubles, including his 2008 acquittal in a child pornography case and his 2019 arrest by federal authorities. Prosecutors alleged that Kelly and his team “traveled throughout the United States and abroad to perform at concert venues … and to recruit women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity with Kelly.”
In 2021, Kelly, known for his hit “I Believe I Can Fly,” was convicted of racketeering and sex trafficking by a federal jury and sentenced to 30 years in prison.
He was found guilty on six of the 13 counts, including three child pornography charges during a separate Chicago trial in 2022. A judge sentenced him to 20 years, with 19 to run concurrently with his previous 30-year sentence.
In April, a federal appeals court upheld Kelly’s 2022 conviction, rejecting his argument that a shorter statute of limitations should have applied to his case.
