Reshona Landfair, the 'Jane Doe' at the center of the R. Kelly trials, publishes memoir

Reshona Landfair has gone by several names, among them: “Jane Doe” and Cho.

Both stem from the abuse at the hands of her now convicted godfather, the R&B superstar R. Kelly.

The victim of the infamous sex tape that was key evidence in two of R. Kelly’s trials, Landfair said he took her passions from her, and the infamy took her name — for years, she hid her identity with pseudonyms. In 2022, Kelly was convicted by a federal jury in Chicago of producing child pornography and enticing minors into criminal sexual activity.

On Tuesday, Landfair is releasing her memoir “Who’s Watching Shorty?” to take back her own name. The book is published by Legacy Lit, an imprint of Hachette Book Group.

Landfair writes that, in her youth, she was a tomboyish girl making entrepreneurial strides selling Girl Scout Cookies, tearing up local basketball courts in her Oak Park neighborhood and singing with music group 4 The Cause.

“I’m reclaiming my name because I don’t want it to be a dirty word,” she explains in the opening chapter. “And my body because I no longer want my image reduced to a blacked-out face of an exploited child.”

In the book, Landfair details how the fallout of the cases, as well as the continued abuse from Kelly, impacted her life.

A lawyer for Kelly said his client had not been sent an advance copy of the book, and couldn’t comment on specific allegations, but that Kelly didn’t want to dispute the book’s allegations so as not to interfere with its sales.

“Ms. Landfair was thrust into the public eye against her will at an early age by unscrupulous persons intent on assassinating the reputation of Mr. Kelly,” the statement from Kelly's legal counsel said. “She did not deserve that or the years of torment that followed from it. … If there is a financial benefit Ms. Landfair can get now by using Mr. Kelly’s name in a book, he wants her to have it.”

The nearly 27-minute tape that launched Landfair into the public eye was anonymously sent to then- Chicago Sun-Times music critic Jim DeRogatis in 2002. DeRogatis saw footage that appeared to show Kelly performing sex acts on an underage girl; that girl turned out to be Landfair. The Sun-Times decided to hand the tape over to police, and a Cook County grand jury soon indicted Kelly, whose given name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, on child pornography charges.

"Robert used sex as a weapon of control," Landfair wrote.

"The videotapes were his receipts," she added, noting he'd carry at least a dozen on him at all times.

In the video, Kelly can allegedly be seen handing Landfair dollar bills. Asked why, Landfair testified that Kelly "wanted it to appear as if I was a prostitute.”

When the first case went to trial in 2008, Landfair declined to testify; Kelly was acquitted, with Kelly's lawyers leaning on the absence of her testimony. In the book, Landfair said that Kelly had been keeping her under his control, locking her away in his home or bus and limiting the information she had about the case or his public appearances.

“Robert was so mad, his threats to me, to keep me denying this ever happened, often came in the form of physical and psychological abuse,” Landfair said. “Most days, I was so paralyzed with fear that I couldn’t allow myself to think of an answer Robert hadn’t told me to think.”

Public perception doubled down as prosecutors failed to protect her by playing the tape, which she told Rolling Stone in her first public interview she thinks would not have been released if she were white.

Landfair said while she received support through the trial, those voices were “drowned out” by those saying her family was “riding the gravy train.” She pointed to a "Chappelle's Show" skit about the infamous tape, which she said exploited her humiliation and trauma, adding “insult to injury” for the then-still teen.

“I already knew nobody could see what was happening, or if you did, surely you didn’t see it as a problem," Landfair writes. “Everybody was looking, after all, but no one was watching.”

Landfair and Kelly were introduced by her aunt, Stephanie “Sparkle” Edwards, in the mid-1990s — a “product of wanting to win like she was.” Landfair, who was 13 at the time, said at her aunt’s behest, she asked Kelly to be her godfather one day during a session at Kelly’s recording studio, with the specific instruction of sitting in his lap. Her aunt is also who called authorities when she suspected Kelly was abusing her niece.

Later, she said Kelly turned their conversations sexual, first when he would ask her what she was wearing on the phone, coaching her responses. During the trial, she told the jury that he soon pushed further, and the abuse occurred “innumerable times … like, uncountable.”

“Are you gonna be less than the angel you’re supposed to be?” she recalled him asking.

But she said there were larger themes at play in her abuse. She said girls, and particularly Black girls, are shamed for their changing bodies and deemed “too foolish or too fast” to stay out of the “clutches of lecherous men.”

In releasing the book, she said she hopes her story helps others.

It closes with a note to other victims of assault, offering phone numbers for organizations that can help, as well as encouragement: "I believe you. I see you."

“It’s not easy being a girl, especially not a Black girl,” Landfair writes. “And if s*** happens, we girls are supposed to lick our wounds quietly and protect our violator’s secrets as our own. … That’s why I’m raising my voice, stepping out of the shadows, and reintroducing myself. Because I know there’s a blessing in it— for me and maybe for you, too. I’m not holding on to one more lie.”