This story includes descriptions of sexual crimes involving children
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) – Kimber Amonette isn’t sure how often she checked the Indiana Sex and Violent Offender Registry, but it became part of her routine. Nightly. Daily. Searching for a name that never appeared. Her father’s.
“I went through all the counties. I went through every single name,” Amonette said.
In 1994, Daniel Kelly was sentenced 72 years in prison on multiple counts of child molesting and child exploitation. He pleaded guilty to all counts.
The victims were his daughters, Kimber and her older sisters Deonna and Tiffany.
“To not have a father in your life, that’s hard enough,” Amonette said. “And then the fact that your own father is the one who abused you like this. It’s been hard. It was hard growing up.”
Kelly raped his three children for a period of at least five years during court-ordered visits to his Indianapolis apartment. According to court records, Kelly forced them to pose for explicit photographs, which he kept in a scrapbook, even writing in his diary that “now that is child pornography”.
Amonette says she struggled to find help as a child, remembering how she told adults at school about the abuse, “and the schools reached out to my mother and told my mother that I was lying.”
Confessions from Kelly’s diary led to his arrest, stopping his abuse of Deonna, then 9, Tiffany, 8, and Kimber, 7.
As adults, Deonna and Tiffany struggled with substance abuse, which Amonette blames on the trauma they suffered as children.
They died in separate drug overdoses.
After his conviction, Amonette hoped to never see her father again. Instead, he showed up to her work.
“I had an emotional breakdown. I was so distraught I couldn’t even focus on the rest of the day’s work,” Amonette said.
Because Kelly was sentenced just months before the creation of the National Sex Offender Registry in 1994, he did not have to register as a sex offender upon his release in 2025.
Amonette had been notified Kelly would be released from prison more than 30 years early because of good behavior. But, she couldn’t track where he lived because Kelly wasn’t registered as a sex offender.
One day, when Amonette, who works as a retail manager, was called to the front desk for a return, there was Kelly.
She started filming the interaction on her phone to show police, but Kelly never directly spoke to her.
“I have no idea what his intentions were. But, he’s sick,” Amonette said. “I knew I would have to run into him eventually one day, living in Indianapolis, but I did not think it would be this soon.”
She saw Kelly outside her job, once again, the very next day.
When she contacted police, Amonette said, officers told her he never broke the law because no active protective order had been served.
“I felt like he was laughing in my face. That he’s out and there’s nothing I can do about it,” Amonette said.
Amonette believes there was a protective order from Kelly’s original conviction more than 30 years ago,, but the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office has been unable to locate it.
“I feel like the system has failed me,” Amonette said.
In 2001, the state tried enforcing retroactive sex offender registration, but the Indiana Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 2009, citing ex post facto law.
Amonette is now trying any resources available.
She’s filed for a new protective order. Since she doesn’t have Kelly’s current address, Amonette sent the order to his parole officer.
While he was in prison, she signed up for the Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification (SAVIN) system, which allows victims to track when an offender changes prisons or is released.
SAVIN notified her when Kelly was arrested again, at the end of May. He’s being held at the Indiana Department of Correction intake facility in Plainfield on two parole violations: tampering with an electronic monitoring device, and possession of sexually obscene materials.
Amonette believes it’s proof Kelly hasn’t nor can change.
“He’s a sick man,” Amonette said.
Her routine now consists of work and taking care of her large family. Amonette is recently married, has 11 children, and soon will have two grandchildren.
One way she’s trying to take care of them is protecting them from people like her father.
While there are a number of resources available for victims of violent or sexual crimes, most are centered around mental health, restitution, or catered to people recently or actively being victimized (such as shelters).
Amonette said the prosecutor’s office directed her to the county’s Victim Assistance Unit, but the lone phone call she received offered little help. She has reached out to multiple local, state and federal representatives to see if there could be new ways to create protections for victims in situations like hers.
Kelly eventually received the protective order after being arrested on parole violations. There’s still no date set on his parole hearing.
It’s not clear how many offenders avoided the Sex and Violent Offenders Registry due to court rulings like Indiana’s. But, after her experience, Amonette felt confident saying, “You don’t know who your neighbor really is.”
News 8 attempted to contact Kelly through his listed attorney, but never received a response.
Crisis Support Service (via RAINN)
Sexual assault and harassment
- National Sexual Assault Hotline: a service of RAINN
- National Helpline for Male Survivors: a service of 1in6
- National Street Harassment Hotline: a service of Stop Street Harassment
- DoD Safe Helpline: a service for members of the U.S. military and their families, operated by RAINN for the Department of Defense
Domestic and dating violence
Other resources
