Reshona Landfair met R. Kelly when she was a pre-teen in 1996. Starstruck, along with the rest of her community, Landfair says she fell victim to his grooming tactics and endured years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse. When an infamous videotape of Kelly abusing Landfair became public, she described feeling isolated, subject to the whims of her abuser, and known only in the courts and to the world as “Jane Doe.”
When asked how she felt after the tape surfaced publicly, Landfair told All Things Considered host Juana Summers, “It was everything that I hear about prison.” “It was very traumatizing. It was very hurtful and lonely,” she added.
The video was shown to juries in two of Kelly’s trials on child pornography charges: first in 2008, which ended in his acquittal, and again in 2022, which resulted in Kelly’s conviction.
Landfair’s new memoir, Who’s Watching Shorty? Reclaiming Myself from the Shame of R. Kelly’s Abuse, details her turbulent adolescence and escape from a long cycle of exploitation as she seeks to be a voice for other survivors. The book recounts her early encounters with Kelly, the years of control and abuse that followed, the impact of the tape’s exposure, and her efforts to reclaim identity and agency after being publicly identified only as “Jane Doe.”