Reshona Landfair, formerly 'Jane Doe,' recounts abuse by R. Kelly in new memoir

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 26 February 2026

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Reshona Landfair met R. Kelly when she was a pre-teen in 1996. Starstruck, Landfair says she fell victim to his grooming tactics, followed by years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. A video of Kelly abusing Landfair eventually became public – and helped lead to Kelly’s conviction. Now, Landfair tells her story for the first time in her memoir Who’s Watching Shorty? In today’s episode, she tells NPR’s Juana Summers about being “kept” by Kelly, the way the public treats young Black women who survive abuse, and what she wants the world to know about her today.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Empier's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. Quick warning. Today's interview is a tough
0:07.3	listen. It's with Roshona Landfair. Her memoir, Who's Watching Shorty, is a first-hand account of being
0:12.7	sexually abused by R&B superstar R. Kelly. There are many Jane Does in multiple trials who testified
0:18.9	that Kelly abused them. But Landfair is probably
0:21.7	the most well-known, even if she's only now going public with her name. Because when she was
0:27.7	14, a video of her being sexually abused leaked to the public. Journalists saw it, music fans
0:33.4	saw it. It was the tape that eventually led to Kelly's conviction after many, many years.
0:38.7	In this interview, NPR's Wanner Summers asks her about that tape, about her reaction,
0:43.1	about her parents' reaction, and also what landfair has to say to the adults in R. Kelly's
0:48.1	orbit who helped him. That's after the break.
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1:29.9	Roshona Landfair was a budding performer in a Chicago rap group in the 1990s.
1:34.7	At age 13, she met another musician named Robert, known to the rest of the world as R. Kelly.
1:40.8	Oh, I was mesmerized when I first met Robert. He was a great talent. He was a huge celebrity in my
1:47.4	eyes. Everything, you know, I aspired to be. He was motivational. There were a lot of commonalities,
	...

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