David Bowie and Iman’s daughter makes surprising confession about dad’s death

David Bowie and Iman’s daughter, Alexandra “Lexi” Jones, got candid about her traumatic experience with the troubled teen industry, which she claimed prevented her from seeing her father on his deathbed in 2016. 

The 25-year-old took to Instagram to allege that she was forcibly taken from her home at age 14 to a wilderness therapy program and rehabilitation center due to her struggles with depression, substance abuse and an eating disorder. 

Lexi claimed that after her father was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2014, she began spiralling out of control and drinking to excess. 

“For me, it wasn’t about fun,” she said in her video. “I wasn’t experimenting, I was escaping. Escaping from my complicated mind, my complicated family, my complicated school. When the party ended for everyone else, I kept going. And I drank and got high alone.” 

“I became someone who lashed out. I was cruel to people who didn’t treat me the way I wanted to be treated,” she continued. Lexi then recalled the moment that David read her a letter detailing their decision to send her away for treatment. 

She added that two men came into their home to take her away, and after a struggle, they pulled her into a black SUV and drove off. 

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“I felt stripped of any right to stay in my own life,” she recalled. “By the time the door shut, my parents were already gone.” The musician shared that she spent 91 days in the wilderness therapy program, where she lived outside and learned survival skills, after which she was taken to a treatment center in Utah. 

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Lexi stayed in the center for more than a year, and never got to see her dad again, as he died during that time. “I had the luxury of speaking to him two days before, on his birthday,” she shared. “I told him I loved him and he said it back, and we both knew.” 

She shared her heartbreak over reading David’s death announcement, which stated that he had died surrounded by his family. “Yeah, the whole family was there. Except for me.” 

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By David’s side instead was his son, Duncan Jones, whom he shared with his ex-wife, Angie Bowie, as was his wife, supermodel Iman. After Lexi returned home to be with her family, she began to fall back into old patterns and was taken away again. 

© The Washington Post via Getty Im

“The mental and emotional manipulation I experienced is something I will not forget. I won’t pretend it didn’t happen because that is abuse too,” she said in the clip. The troubled teen industry consists of a broad range of youth programs aimed at helping rebellious or struggling teens, yet these underregulated facilities have come under fire in recent years. 

Paris Hilton detailed her alleged experiences at several youth facilities in the ’90s, claiming that she was “force-fed medications”, “violently restrained”, “dragged down hallways”, and “thrown into solitary confinement”. She shared in a hearing that “these programs promised healing, growth and support, but instead, did not allow me to speak, move freely or even look out a window for two years.”