New documentary claims Whitney Houston was sexually abused as a child

A new documentary about the life of Whitney Houston claims that the singer was a victim of sexual abuse as a child.

The film entitled WhitneyThe film was directed by Kevin Macdonald, the Scottish filmmaker behind films such as A day in September and the drama The last King of Scotland, and premiered yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival.

It alleges that Houston, who died in 2012, was abused at a young age by her cousin, soul singer Dee Dee Warwick, the younger sister of Dionne Warwick.

The allegations are made in the film by Gary Garland-Houston, the half-brother of Whitney Houston, a former NBA basketball player who says he was also abused by Warwick when he was between the ages of seven and nine.

This would mean that the singer would have been a toddler at the time of the alleged abuse.

Regarding the allegations, Macdonald told Deadline: “I suspected it might be some kind of abuse before anyone told me. I just had a feeling that way when I saw interviews about her and footage of her.

“I felt like there was something wrong with her. Something was somehow preventing her from expressing her true self. She was uncomfortable in almost every interview we did with her.

“And I found that very strange and it kind of reminded me of people I had seen who had suffered abuse, just their body language and their sense of holding something back.

“It was just an intuition, and then someone told me off camera. They didn’t want to talk about it on camera, but they said Whitney told her something happened.

“And for a long time, that was the case. I didn’t know if that was true. Then I interviewed Pat Houston and Gary Houston, Whitney’s brother. He told me that he was abused by a woman in the family, and Pat Houston told me that Whitney had actually told her, ‘This is what happened.'”

Dee Dee Warwick, herself a celebrated soul singer who spent her career in the shadow of her sister Dionne, is said to have suffered from drug addiction and died in 2008 at the age of 63.

Although the Houston family has not commented on the allegations, the film, which also includes interviews with her husband Bobby Brown, was made with their consent.

It is also alleged that Houston’s father, John Houston, stole her income. He was also her accountant and had unsuccessfully tried to sue his daughter for $100 million in a breach of contract case in 2002.

Houston died by drowning in the bathtub of a Los Angeles hotel room after years of struggling with her own drug problems.

The film will be released in the UK on July 6.

Read more
What do critics say about Solo?
10 films about the British monarchy
In memory of Margot Kidder