David Bowie’s daughter has said she does “not blame” her family after revealing she was “forcibly” removed from her home as a teenager and sent to multiple treatment centres.
Describing a period that meant she was absent during her father’s final days, Alexandria ‘Lexi’ Jones, 25, who David had with his model wife Iman, 70, shared a statement on Instagram clarifying that her earlier account of being taken to a facility at 14 was not intended to “assign fault”.
David died in January 2016 aged 69 from liver cancer, two days after releasing his final album Blackstar.
In her latest post, Lexi said her intention was to open discussion about the teenage treatment system, not to create “a narrative of family conflict”.
Lexi added: “I’ve seen a lot of interpretations of what I shared and I want to clarify something important.
“My story was never meant to place blame on my parents. I love my parents deeply and I don’t hold resentment towards them. They were trying to help a child who was struggling in ways none of us fully understood at the time. I never shared this to create a narrative of family conflict.
“What I was trying to talk about was the experience of being a young person inside the teenage treatment system and how it feels while it is happening. Those feelings can exist at the same time as love for the people who were trying to help you. “Both things can be true.
“I shared my experience because many people who have been through similar programs carry confusion and silence around it. Hearing from others who related has already shown me the message reached who it was meant to reach.
“I’m not asking anyone to speculate about my family or assign fault to anyone in my life. My intention is conversation and understanding about a system, not judgement of individuals.
“I spoke about something that shaped me in hopes someone else might feel less alone in theirs.”
In a previous account, Lexi described being 14 when “two men” came to take her to a treatment facility.
She recalled her father reading from a letter that ended with the line: “I’m sorry we have to do this.”
Lexi said: “Then two men came through the door, and they were both well over six feet tall. They told me I could do this the easy way or the hard way. I chose the hard way. I resisted. I screamed. I held onto the table leg.
“They grabbed me, they put their hands on me, they pulled me away from everything I knew and I was screaming bloody murder. I was screaming for someone to help me, but no one did… .
“I felt stripped of any right to stay in my own life. They got me back into a black SUV and shoved me inside. By the time the door shut, my parents were already gone. I was alone.”
She said she spent 91 days in a wilderness therapy programme before being transferred to a residential treatment centre in Utah for 13 months. It was there, she said, that she learned of Bowie’s death.
Lexi added: “I had the luxury of speaking to him two days before, on his birthday.
“I told him I loved him, and he said it back, and we both knew. Then I saw the post, the one that said something like, David Bowie passed away, surrounded by his whole family.
“It made me physically ill because, yeah, the whole family was there. Except for me.”
