Two summers ago, Kelly Rowland’s father Christopher Lovett made a public plea in hopes of seeing his daughter for the first time in over 20 years. Lovett, 65 at the time, recalled to the U.K. Sunday Mirror that he attended one of her concerts and sat in the cheap seats crying tears of joy. He begged a security guard to pass a personal note onto Kelly. However his attempts fell on deaf ears because the guard didn’t believe he was Rowland’s father.
Rowland and her mother were evicted from their home when she was 7. Reportedly after this time, the former Destiny’s Child star lost contact with her father who suffered from alcoholism and verbally abused her mother. Lovett says he is a changed man now and wants another chance with his daughter.
Most recently he told Radar Online,
“So many previous years have passed and I’m getting old. [He’s 67] I just pray she comes back into my life before it’s too late.[…]I couldn’t control [the drinking and verbal abuse that Kelly witnessed]. I hoped I could make it up to her. But I’m still waiting for that day.”
He added: “It wasn’t physical between me and Kelly’s mom, but there were many days and nights when Kelly would be bawling her eyes out, clutching my leg begging me, ‘Please daddy, stop shouting at mummy.’ That image of her howling, begging me to stop will haunt me forever.”
After her father’s initial plea in summer 2011, Rowland responded that November, telling UK Cosmo:
“He reached out to me saying he wanted to see me, but it’s unfortunate he did it so publicly. I want to meet him, and soon, I really do. I forgave him a long time ago. I haven’t seen my dad for almost 20 years. It’s nothing I want a pity party for. He left me and my mom and I was angry. I wanted to be a daddy’s girl so bad…”The Cosby Show” … made me think, ‘Why aren’t my family like that?’ But this is not a perfect world.”
Rowland made plans to see her father that Christmas, however based on Lovett’s current plea, that meet-up apparently never happened.
