Singer Sparkle Speaks Out After Niece Reshona Landfair Suggests She Assisted In Grooming Her For R. Kelly

The woman who testified as Jane Doe at R. Kelly's 2022 federal trial told "CBS Mornings" it feels "very liberating" to finally reveal her identity and speak publicly about the relationship she formed with the R&B singer when she was just a teenager.

For years, Reshona Landfair was known only as “Jane Doe,” an underage girl in R. Kelly’s infamous sex tape who testified in the disgraced singer’s 2022 federal trial. Now at 41, Landfair is coming out of the shadows and reclaiming her name for the first time.

“I really wanted to live in my true skin and my true self. My true self today is Reshona Landfair,” she said to “CBS Mornings” during the exclusive interview about her new memoir, “Who's Watching Shorty?: Reclaiming Myself from the Shame of R. Kelly's Abuse.”

In the book, Landfair shares troubling details about how she was groomed by Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, after being introduced to him through her aunt, R&B artist Sparkle.

It was her aunt who encouraged her to ask the star to be her godfather. “The next time we're at the studio, you should ask Robert to be your godfather,” she said to her young niece, and —as Landfair points out— to sit on his lap and rub his head.

“That is the start of him entering into my life in a different way than just being an artist or hanging out at the studio. It became more personable at that moment,” Landfair said.

Landfair says that moment opened the door to a relationship that quickly turned abusive, alleging Kelly began touching her inappropriately when she was around 13.

A sex tape, recorded when she was 14, later spread nationwide a few years later, turning her abuse into a spectacle she says left her feeling “empty,” “hollow” and humiliated.

​Kelly was arrested on child pornography charges in 2002, but a Chicago jury acquitted him in 2008 after Landfair, then still under his sway, denied to a grand jury that she was the girl in the video. It’s a decision she said is one of her biggest regrets.

Years later, the Lifetime docuseries “Surviving R. Kelly” pushed her to confront how many others had been hurt, and she ultimately testified against him in a 2022 federal trial in Chicago.

"I felt responsible that he was able to hurt so many more people,” she said. “During the time, I thought maybe these were just sexual fetishes that he had with me. Maybe this was just abuse I was going through."

Sparkle, who also testified in the 2008 trial, also spoke in the "Surviving R. Kelly" docuseries, saying: “Any suggestion that I groomed, facilitated, or enabled harm to my niece is untrue and deeply painful, especially given my documented actions at the time and throughout.”

Kelly is now serving a total of 31 years in prison on racketeering, sex trafficking, and child pornography convictions from federal cases in New York and Illinois.​

Today, Landfair is a mother and the founder of Project Refine, a mentoring effort for girls and women. “I’m just trying to put my best foot forward,” she said, “and use all of this pain and turn it into purpose.”

Speaking of Sparkle, the singer has released a statement, making it clear she had no involvement in, nor did she enable, the abuse Reshona experienced:

“Any suggestion that I groomed, facilitated, or enabled harm to my niece is untrue and deeply painful, especially given my documented actions at the time and throughout,” 

“When I was informed that her parents were allowing Reshona to spend unchaperoned time with R. Kelly, I immediately contacted DCFS. When the tape surfaced and the state brought charges against him in 2008, I cooperated fully and testified under oath, despite immense pressure not to do so. I did this because protecting my niece from abuse and telling the truth mattered more to me than money and my career.”

Sparkle also stated that she didn’t just report the abuse; she stood up for Reshona when others did not, even if it ended up affecting her music career.