Dionne Warwick slams accusations her sister molested Whitney Houston

Dionne Warwick has slammed claims that her sister, the singer Dee Dee Warwick, molested Whitney Houston and her brother Gary when they were young.

The claims emerged in the documentary film Whitney, released earlier this year and directed by Kevin Macdonald.

“I have tried to refrain from responding to that,” the 77-year-old singer told Larry King.

“First of all, it’s totally hogwash. My sister would never, ever have done anything to do any harm to any child, especially within our family. And for those lies to be perpetuated in this so-called documentary film, I think it’s evil.

“I will never, and I mean this, ever forgive those who perpetuated this insanity.”

Houston, who died in 2012 at the age of 48, was Warwick and her late sister Dee Dee’s cousin, from her mother’s side.

But in the documentary, Mary Jones, Houston’s personal assistant, said that the singer had told her in confidence that Dee Dee had molested her and Gary when they were 7 and 9.

Dee Dee, who died at the age of 66 in 2008, and who had struggled with substance abuse for many years, would have been 18 at the time.

Though he does not name Warwick specifically, Gary Houston says in the film: “Being a child – being seven, eight, nine years old – and being molested by a female family member of mine. My mother and father were gone a lot, so we stayed with a lot of different people… four, five different families who took care of us.”

Jones adds in her interview for Macdonald: “[Whitney] looked at me and said, ‘Mary, I was molested at a young age too. But it wasn’t by a man—it was a woman.’

“She had tears in her eyes. She says, ‘Mommy don’t know the things we went through.’ I said, ‘Have you ever told your mother?’ She says, ‘No.’ I said, ‘Well, maybe you need to tell her.’ She said, ‘No, my mother would hurt somebody if I told her who it was.’ She just had tears rolling down her face, and I just hugged her. I said, ‘One day when you get the nerve, you need to tell your mother. It will lift the burden off you.’”

Macdonald has backed up the claims made in the film.

He told Vanity Fair in May: “[Houston] seemed kind of asexual in a strange way. She was a beautiful woman, but she was never particularly sexy. I’ve seen and done some filming with people who have suffered childhood sexual abuse, and there was just something about her manner that was reminiscent to me of that sort of shrinking – a lack of comfort in her own physicality that felt, maybe that is what it was.

“Shortly after thinking that, someone did tell me off the record about being told by Whitney about being abused, and it being one of the central reasons behind her self-torture. It took a while for anyone to go on record about it, and eventually the family did.”

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