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It doesn’t look like a happy family reunion is in store for Mariah Carey. This week, the singer’s older sister, Alison Carey, accused her of inflicting emotional distress with her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. The court documents reference a specific chapter in the memoir, “Dandelion Tea,” where Mariah recalls her older sister gave her a Valium and tried to”pimp her out and threw a cup of boiling hot tea on her.” According to the memoir, the singer was only 12-years-old at the time.
Alison denies the story, claiming that her sister “presented no evidence to substantiate these serious allegations” in the tell-all memoir, and is suing her sister for $1.25 million for “the infliction of immense emotional distress.”
Keep reading for more details.
Alison describes her younger sister as "heartless" in the suit, and accuses the singer of using "lurid claims" about Alison to promote sales of her memoir.
According to the court paperwork,"[Carey] also callously dismisses [Alison] as her 'ex' sister, but instead of saying no more about her, [Carey] used her book to humiliate and embarrass plaintiff as stories about the memoir appeared in newspapers around the world, on TV and across the Internet, most of them with headlines repeating defendant's allegations — all of them published without giving [Alison] any opportunity to respond."
Besides the humiliation and embarassment, the document also makes note of the vast difference between the sisters' financial situations.
It reads, "[Carey] used her status as a public figure to attack her penniless sister, generating sensational headlines describing her lurid claims to promote sales of her book."
The book has also impacted Alison's mental wellbeing.
"Already struggling with the unspeakable trauma of her childhood and having her own children abandon her, she has become severely depressed and uncharacteristically tearful since the publication of defendant's book," the document reads. "And now [Alison] struggles, after a long time clean, with alcohol abuse."
Apparently, Carey's lawyers also ignored Alison's attempts to settle the dispute, as the document says "no response has been received."
As a result, Alison is demanding over a million dollars in compensation.
"Plaintiff will demand an amount no less than $1.25 million compensation for the intentional infliction of immense emotional distress caused by defendant's heartless, vicious, vindictive, despicable and totally unnecessary public humiliation of defendant's already profoundly damaged older sister," the document concluded.
Alison herself signed off on the words.
