EXCLUSIVE: Fresh R. Kelly Abuse Horror — Rapper Groomed Video Victim Reshona Landfair From the Age of 12… And Insisted She Called Him 'Daddy'
Reshona Landfair details her horrofying experience in. anew memoir.
Feb. 3 2026, Published 3:05 p.m. ET
One of R. Kelly's most high-profile grooming victims has revealed the rapper got his claws into her from the age of 12, while demanding she call him "Daddy" and turning her into "a s-- slave" whose name and life were consumed by his abuse for more than a decade.
RadarOnline.com can reveal abuse survivor Reshona Landfair is now 42 and speaking publicly under her own name for the first time in a new memoir, Who's Watching Shorty? Reclaiming Myself from the Shame of R. Kelly's Abuse, out Tuesday, February 3.
'Robert Shattered Me'
Victim Reshona Landfair has released her memoir titled, 'Who's Watching Shorty?'
Former child rapper Landfair was once anonymized as Jane Doe in Kelly's infamous child p--- s-- tape, but is demanding recognition as a woman and victim rather than a punchline in Kelly's sordid s-- case.
Landfair, who was 14 when the video at the center of Kelly's first child pornography case was filmed, alleges the singer methodically groomed her after entering her Chicago family's orbit through her aunt, R&B artist Sparkle, and gradually escalated to a regime of control, secrecy, and violence.
She claimed he insisted she address him as "Daddy" in private, then built an all-encompassing power over her movements, social contacts, and career – often keeping her in cramped offices or studio spaces where she slept on makeshift beds and was required to seek permission to eat or use the bathroom.
"He was always 'Daddy,'" Landfair writes. "Robert knowingly victimized me as a child. I was brainwashed by Robert and a s-- slave. Robert made me suicidal as a young adult. It is awful being me. I gave up my family for him. Nothing else mattered back then. And I still don't know why … by the time I was 16, 17 years of age, the only thing that mattered was him. I was manipulated, and independence didn't seem like an option. Robert shattered me."
R. Kelly's Pattern of Abuse and Conviction
R. Kelly is believed to have groomed Landfair after entering her family's social circle.
Landfair's nightmarish abuse account emerges more than two decades after the tape first surfaced and years after Kelly, 59 – born Robert Sylvester Kelly – was convicted in federal courts in New York and Illinois on charges including racketeering, s-- trafficking and producing child sexual abuse imagery; he is serving concurrent sentences of 30 and 20 years at a medium-security prison near Durham, North Carolina.
At the time the video circulated, Landfair said she was still a virgin and her "soupy" state on camera was caused by Cristal champagne Kelly gave her, yet the footage was bootlegged on street corners and used as fodder for comedy skits while she was publicly named and shamed.
Landfair eventually took the stand as a protected Jane Doe in his 2022 federal trial in Chicago.
"He gave me a nasty look," she says of facing Kelly in court.
"When he gave me that look, it was confirmation that I was sitting in the right place. I felt like, 'The nerve of you to hear all of these things that you have taken somebody through, and for you to still feel like I owe you something, or I'm disloyal? … That's what made it easy for me, because I'm like, 'You don't get it. You think you're untouchable. You're still lying.'"
'I Was Never a Victim'
Landfair hid behind the nickname Chon to avoid public recognition.
Landfair's memoir also addresses what she describes as a cascade of institutional failures – from family members who she says fell into "utter, naive denial," to authorities and media outlets that exposed her identity and played the 26-minute tape in open court.
"To the public, I was a mockery. I was never a victim, so I never saw myself as a victim," she said, arguing racism and stereotypes about Black girls being "too fast" shaped how her case was treated.
For years, Landfair tried to disappear behind the nickname "Chon" to avoid recognition linked to the video, but said the shadow of Kelly's abuse followed every job, friendship, and relationship.
"There's no job that I can apply for where this isn't the forefront of my life. There's no relationship I could be in where this isn't the forefront of my life," she says
"Once I realized that I didn't have peace or privacy by hiding, I had to take ownership."
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Landfair founded a nonprofit organization to mentor other young women.
Now working at a school-based health center in Chicago and running a mentoring nonprofit for young women, Project Refine, Landfair says publishing Who's Watching Shorty? is the final step in reclaiming both her story and her name from the man she once called godfather.
"I was afraid to say my own name and be who I really was to work, to friends," she said. "I created Chon, and that's what I've been going by. But I'm here today as Reshona."
