David Bowie’s daughter defends parents after revealing father ‘forcibly’ sent her to treatment centre
David Bowie’s daughter has defended her parents after previously admitting that she was ‘forcibly’ removed from her home and sent to a series of treatment facilities.
Earlier this month, musician Alexandria ‘Lexi’ Jones, 25, shared a candid video in which she described how she had been taken from her family home at 14 while struggling with depression, an eating disorder, and substance misuse.
The daughter of David Bowie and his wife, model Iman said the intervention happened during what she called the most fragile period of her life.
When Bowie was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2014, Lexi said she reached ‘breaking point,’ and turned to drink and drugs.
She recalled her father reading from a letter he had written to her before she was taken away. One line has never left her: ‘I’m sorry we have to do this.’
Lexi has now come to her parents’ defence, clarifying that she had never intended to place ‘blame’ upon them for the actions they had taken.
In a statement issued to her Instagram, Lexi wrote: ‘I’ve seen a lot of interpretations of what I shared, and I want to clarify something important.
She continued: ‘My story was never meant to place blame on my parents. I love my parents deeply, and I don’t hold resentment toward 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.’
Lexi went on to say: ‘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 judgment of individuals. I spoke about something that shaped me in hopes someone else might feel less alone in theirs.’
Lexi had previously explained how, while other teenagers around her were experimenting, her drinking and drug use came from a darker place.
‘For me it wasn’t about fun,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t experimenting, I was escaping. When the party ended for everyone else, I kept going.’
Shortly after receivingthat fateful letter from her father, two men entered the house. ‘They told me I could do this the easy way or the hard way,’ she said. ‘I chose the hard way.’
Lexi described clinging to a table leg, screaming and resisting as she was pulled away. She was placed into a black SUV and driven off without being told where she was going.
‘I felt stripped of any right to stay in my own life,’ she said. ‘By the time the door shut, my parents were already gone.’
She was taken to a wilderness therapy programme, a controversial form of outdoor behavioural treatment used in the US for adolescents. For 91 days, she lived outside in winter conditions, sleeping under tarps and learning survival skills.
Lexi said she was strip-searched on arrival and given a fleece, snow pants, boots, and a backpack ‘bigger than me’. She described digging holes to use as toilets and being required to count out loud so staff could monitor her movements.
‘We made fires by stripping birch bark and striking flint and steel,’ she said. ‘I was a city girl. I didn’t even know this kind of programme existed.’
After three months, she was transferred to a residential treatment centre in Utah, where she remained for more than a year. She says the strip searches continued and that she was monitored while sleeping.
It was there that she learned her father had died in January 2016, aged 69, days after releasing his final album, Blackstar.
‘I had the luxury of speaking to him two days before, on his birthday,’ she said. ‘I told him I loved him and he said it back. We both knew.’
When she saw announcements stating that Bowie had died surrounded by his family, she said the wording made her feel physically sick.
‘Yes, the whole family was there. Except for me.’
Lexi said her grief was placed into a structured phase within the programme, with expectations and milestones. ‘They categorised it,’ she explained. ‘At the time I thought that was normal. I didn’t know how to grieve and that was my only frame of reference.’
She had begun struggling long before her father’s illness. Teachers noticed signs of anxiety when she was under 10, she said, and she experienced her first panic attack around the same time.
She developed bulimia at 12 and began self-harming at 11, while also coping with learning disabilities that left her feeling ‘stupid’ and ‘unworthy’.
Growing up with two globally recognised parents intensified that pressure. ‘Adults would talk to me differently,’ she said. ‘Some weren’t interested in me as a person at all, only as proximity to something else. I felt like I existed as an idea.’
After returning home shortly before turning 16, Lexi said she fell back into old patterns and was later sent away again. ‘This repetitive cycle made everything blur,’ she said. ‘It made me feel like a problem that was being passed off.’
David and Iman married in 1992 and remained together until his death in 2016. Lexi also has a half-brother, filmmaker Duncan Jones, from Bowie’s first marriage.
Lexi says she is still processing the emotional impact of those years, including flinching in environments that feel overly controlled and scanning rooms for rules she might have missed.
She recently released her debut album, Xandri, an independently created 12-track project written and produced by her.
Explaining why she chose to speak out, she said she wanted to address ‘the parts of yourself you lose in the process of being fixed’.
‘I know how lucky I am in many ways,’ she added. ‘But 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.’
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