Speaking up

Mariah Carey reveals sister drugged her and tried to sell her to a pimp

Mariah Carey says that when she was 12 years old, her sister drugged her and tried to “sell her out to a pimp.”

The shocking claim is detailed in her new memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. In it, Carey describes her older sibling Allison giving her tranquilizers and cocaine before physically attacking her and trying to force her into prostitution.

During a recent appearance on AppleTV+’s The Oprah Conversation promoting the upcoming book, host Oprah Winfrey read the passage aloud: “When I was 12 years old, my sister drugged me with Valium, offered me a pinky nail full of cocaine, inflicted me with third-degree burns and tried to sell me out to a pimp.”

“Yeah, that was a thing,” said Carey. “It’s described through the feeling of when a storm is about to happen … it’s a scary thing but you sense it and you learn to navigate your behavior because of it.

“I tried to be thoughtful about that, although, I don’t know that the same courtesy has been extended to me from anybody that caused certain traumatic events in my life.”

Carey described her sister as “troubled and traumatized,” and also said her brother was “extremely violent.”

She refers to them as “ex-brother” and “ex-sister,” and says they both have profited off of selling lies about her to the press.

Carey added: “We don’t even really know each other … we didn’t grow up together, but we did.

“Like, they were on their journeys, by the time I got into the world, they had already been damaged, in my opinion. But again, I wasn’t there.

“I was dropped into this world and I literally felt like an outsider amongst my own family.

“They just grew up with the experience of living with a Black father and a white mother together as a family and I was for the most part living with my mother, which they saw as easier, but in reality it was not. They have always thought that my life was easy.”

Asked how she feels now that the book is (almost) out there in the world, Carey said: “Freer.”

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Freer. ? Thank you @Oprah ? Watch now on Apple TV+

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