Whitney Houston's Family Addresses Allegations That Singer Was Molested by Dee Dee Warwick as a Child

Whitney Houston's family is "horrified" over new claims regarding the late singer's life.

In the new Whitney documentary, in which director Kevin Macdonald interviewed over 70 of the music icon's closest family and friends, allegations are made that claim Whitney and her elder half-brother, Gary Garland, were molested by their cousin, Dee Dee Warwick, when they were children and that Whitney remained traumatized throughout adulthood.

“We cannot overstate the shock and horror we feel and the difficulty we have believing that my niece Dee Dee Warwick . . . molested two of my three children,” Whitney's mother, Cissy Houston, said in a lengthy statement to People on behalf of herself and Dee Dee's sister, Dionne Warwick. "[Whitney] never publicly 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."

"Dee Dee may have had her personal challenges but the idea that she would have molested my children is overwhelming and for us unfathomable," the statement continued. "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 ... has ever heard these allegations; we have never heard anything remotely connected to the crimes charged against Dee Dee in the film. How can that be fair to my daughter, to Dee Dee, or to our family?"

Read the full statement here.

Whitney's brother, Gary, recently spoke with Good Morning America, in footage that aired on Wednesday, where he responded to the allegations made in the documentary.

"I was indeed nine years old and I was being fondled with from time to time," he claims. "But it was a situation I didn't understand. I knew it was abnormal."

Dee Dee, who was also a soul singer, died in October 2008, a few years before Whitney was tragically found dead in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Feb. 11, 2012.

ET has reached out to Cissy and Dionne for comment.

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