Mariah Carey didn't have an ideal childhood.
In an interview with Oprah Winfrey and in her new book The Meaning Of Mariah Carey, she recalled her older sister Alison trying to sell her to a pimp when she was 12.
"Through all the years, both my sister and my brother have put me on the chopping block, sold lies to any gossip or rag or trashy website that would buy or listen. They have attacked me for decades. But when I was twelve 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."
Carey told Oprah that her bother and sister, who are about a decade older than her, resented the way she was brought up.
"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," Mariah explained. "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."
Alison Carey has had a long career in the sex trade. She was arrested in 2016, at age 55, for soliciting money in exchange for sexual favors from an undercover officer. At the time, she said she was HIV positive.