*Nearly a year after the Whitney Houston doc, “Whitney,” claimed the late singer had been molested by her cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, sister Dionne Warwick is defending her late sibling in a new interview with PEOPLE.
“What was depicted of her is absolutely untrue,” Warwick tells the publication.
“All I can say about Dee Dee is that she was a loving, caring, giving person,” said the singer, whose new album is out May 17. “What was depicted of her is absolutely untrue and something I will never forgive.”
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— People (@people) May 10, 2019
At the time the doc came out, Whitney’s mother, Cissy Houston, issued a statement which slammed the film for its unfair portrayal of Dee Dee.
It read in part:
“We cannot reconcile the Public’s need to know about Whitney’s life as justification for invasion of her privacy or the charge against Dee Dee, a charge which neither Whitney nor Dee Dee is here to deny, refute or affirm. Neither I, Dionne, nor my son Michael who was very close to his sister, and in the film is VERY candid about their drug use, has ever heard these allegations; we have never heard anything remotely connected to the crimes charged against Dee Dee in the film.
Whitney’s former assistant, Marie Jones, made the shocking accusations in the doc, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in France in May 2018. In an interview with IndieWire interview, director Kevin Macdonald addressed the sexual abuse claims.
“Gary the brother told me he was abused by Dee Dee,” he said. “So it’s not allegations. He’s saying I was abused by this person and told me, ‘I think she abused Whitney.’”
Dee Dee reportedly battled drug addiction for much of her life, and The Telegraph reported she was open about her sexuality.
“Dee Dee was openly lesbian in the music industry,” one anonymous source close to the Warwick family told the publication. “Not necessarily in public, but I don’t think that was a secret within the music industry. And that was a detriment to her development also, because she didn’t hide it within the music industry. She didn’t.”
In 2008, she died in a New Jersey nursing home at the age of 63. Dionne was reportedly by her side.
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