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For more on Whitney Houston’s shocking untold story, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE on newsstands Friday.
Cissy Houston and Dionne Warwick’s full statement:
My niece Dionne Warwick and I make this statement to raise our voices above the din surrounding the release of the film,Whitney. Although the film is marketed as a Houston Family approved/endorsed project, neither my son, Michael, Dionne nor I knew of the allegations of abuse, the direction the film would take, until two days before the screening at Cannes.
To begin we want to state clearly that the horror of what victims of sexual abuse experience is unimaginable. We make no attempt to minimize the pain, the trauma and perhaps lifelong damage to the psyche of abuse victims. We understand and acknowledge that there are no rules governing a person’s reaction to trauma and every person reacts differently. By this statement we do not intend to defend, condone or excuse the crime of molestation.
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We cannot, however, overstate the shock and horror we feel and the difficulty we have believing that my niece Dee Dee Warwick (Dionne’s sister) molested two of my three children.
I’ve been told—as justification for the invasive theme of this film—that Whitney was a public person and therefore the public has a right to know any and everything about her. I say, NO, she was a famous person … a singer, an actress, a quiet but generous philanthropist. She wasn’t running for office, asking for money or trying to win the right to run anyone’s life. Her job does not entitle the “public” to know every intimate detail of her life beyond what she herself revealed during her lifetime. Although she spoke about her struggle with drugs, the interventions, her daughter Krissi and issues in her marriage, she never PUBLICLY spoke about her father’s stealing from her or revealed any claim that she had been molested. IF she was molested I do not believe she would have wanted it to be revealed for the first time to thousands, maybe millions of people in a film.
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After people have seen the film they will draw their own conclusions and we are not trying to change that. We just want people to know there is another side. While the filmmakers certainly had the legal right to make this film, I wonder at the moral right.
source: people.com
