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It has been six years since Whitney Houston’s tragic passing, and a new documentary by Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald has set out to find answers to how the entertaining legend came to be entrenched in addiction that would eventually claim her life.
The film, Whitney, speaks to over 60 of the late entertainer’s close friends and family, and comes to a final theory that has shocked those closest to her.
Macdonald presents a theory that as a child Whitney, and older brother Gary, were both molested by their cousin Dee Dee Warwick – who passed away in 2008 – a trauma that tortured her throughout adulthood.
Speaking to PEOPLE, Whitney’s mother Cissy and Dee Dee’s sister Dionne Warwick, find the allegations of the film ‘painful, ‘exploitative’, and ‘hard to believe.’
Cissy said in a statement, ‘We cannot overstate the shock and horror we feel and the difficulty we have believing that my niece Dee Dee Warwick…molested two of my three children.’
Though the two share their support for all victims of child abuse, they claim these are charges ‘neither Whitney nor Dee Dee are here to deny, refute or affirm’
Cissy told the US publication, ‘How can that be fair to my daughter, to Dee Dee, to our family?’
The shocking allegations come by way of Mary Jones, Whitney’s longtime assistant, who claims in the film that the singer opened up to her about her abuse, and would sometimes ask, ‘Do you think I did something to make her think I wanted her?’
Despite the family’s response, Jones stands by her choice to share the information with the world.
‘I was close to Whitney, she confided in me and I struggled tremendously deciding whether to share this secret or keep to myself,’ Jones tells PEOPLE.
‘I deeply love and respect Dionne, Cissy and their entire families, and my intention was never to embarrass anyone in the family, but rather to bring to light that Whitney was subjected to something painful and troubling as a child. And it’s something that happens to other innocent kids and goes unspoken too much.
Continuing, Jones says, ‘I decided to share the story so that people might understand that throughout her entire life Whitney carried this with her, and the weight of it was immense. Whitney was a wonderful woman, an angel, and she did not drag herself down all alone — there was a cause.’
