Content Warning: This post discusses child sex abuse and will be triggering for some readers.
Documentary maker Kevin Macdonald has revealed that his documentary Whitney, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, confirms the late icon was sexually abused as a child.
In the last few weeks of filming, Macdonald conducted two final interviews with people who were close to Houston. One of those interviews was with Gary Garland-Houston, Whitney Houston’s half-brother, who said he knew details of his sister’s abuse because he was sexually abused by the same person – their cousin, Dee Dee Warwick. Dee Dee, who died in 2008, was the sister of Dionne Warwick, and a soul singer in her own right.
Macdonald told The Sydney Morning Herald that while nobody initially spoke about this traumatic aspect of Houston’s childhood, he had suspected she was a victim of sexual abuse.
“Just looking at the footage of her over her life, I realised that there was something strange about the way she wasn’t comfortable in her own skin,” he said. “She was a beautiful, beautiful woman but there was something about her that was almost asexual. I thought she felt like somebody who has had a trauma in childhood, so I started to ask about it.”
When the film premiered in Cannes, the Warwick family were stunned. Cissie Watwick (Whitney’s mother) and her sister Dionne said they had only learned of the accusations two days before the screening, and released a statement saying the claims were “overwhelming and, for us, unfathomable”.
Top Comments
This is just awful. I wonder though - was it the filmmakers place to tell the world this news? Surely Whitney - even in death - has a right to privacy. If she wanted the world to know, she would have disclosed it herself.
It might help to explain what drove her to drugs.