Whitney Houston’s Family Talks Coping With Sharing Singer’s Sexual Abuse In New Doc

Whitney Houston’s family admits that it wasn’t easy to address the late singer’s sexual abuse at the hands of a family member in her new documentary.

Whitney, the new documentary put together by director Kevin MacDonald, features some intimate stories about the late singer. Houston’s closest family and friends are featured in the documentary that also includes a great deal of footage featuring the singer herself.

While Houston’s successful rise in music history is included in the film, so are her life struggles. One of those moments happened when Whitney was abused by her late cousin Dee Dee Warwick, the cousin of late singer Dionne Warwick.

Pat Houston, the wife of Whitney’s brother Gary, said addressing tough moments like those in the film were not easy for the family.

“It was tough for it to be revealed because it is so personal,” Pat told Fox News in a report this week. “You know, it’s a very embarrassing thing to talk about family members and you just have to know that you’re not responsible for other people’s actions. It was very difficult to deal with that part of the film.”

The film’s director, MacDonald, said that while a number of people have heard stories about Whitney in the past, he felt some of that had dehumanized the singer. Instead of her legacy focusing on the impact that she made on music, the director said people have focused on scandal.

Now, he hopes to change the narrative about her reputation with the documentary.

“I think Whitney’s reputation has been tarnished by what happened in the last 10, 15 years of her life, and in order to reinvigorate her reputation, it feels like people need to understand her,” he said in the Fox News report Friday. “They need to understand her as a human being.”

Pat agreed with those sentiments. The late singer’s sister-in-law said the family wants to concentrate on the musical legacy of Whitney instead of the controversial parts of her life that became tabloid fodder.

“We want to concentrate on her legacy, which is music,” she said. “It was just time to put certain things to rest so that we could do that. And that’s why we are at this place.”

Singer and actress Whitney Houston died in 2012 at the age of 48 following a long battle with substance abuse. The Whitney documentary officially hits theaters on Friday, July 6.