Who Is Mariah Carey’s Sister? The Pop Star Had a Complicated Relationship With Alison Carey
Mariah Carey confirmed in August 2024 that her sister, Alison Carey, had died on the same day as their mother, Patricia Carey. The two siblings had a complicated relationship through the years as they followed different paths in life, with Alison even filing a lawsuit against Mariah three years before her death. But who was Mariah’s sister?
Who Is Mariah Carey’s Sister, Alison Carey?
Alison and Mariah, along with brother Morgan, grew up in Long Island, New York. However, when their parents separated in 1973, Alison, then 11 years old, went to live with their father, Alfred. Mariah, then 3 years old, and Morgan lived with their mother. In a 1995 TV interview, Alison said she and her sister were raised very differently, which made her “jealous.”
“My parents made me say, ‘I am an interracial child,’ which is going to alienate you right there,” Alison, who has a black father and a white mother, said in the interview. “My mother said, ‘Nothing like that will happen with Mariah. I won’t let that happen.’ So they moved and Mariah became Italian and Irish.”
At 15, Alison became pregnant. She got married and dropped out of high school a year later and then turned to the streets to help make ends meet. Around this time, she also became addicted to drugs. “Nobody wanted to hire me,” she said back in 1995 as to why she turned to prostitution. “I didn’t have any experience doing anything. I knew I had to get a job, but I couldn’t find one.” When she was 28, she got tested and found out she was HIV-positive.
What Was Mariah Carey’s Relationship WIth Alison Like?
Mariah made a rare comment about her struggling sister during a 1998 interview on 20/20. “It was a very difficult thing to see,” she said about her sister’s issues with drugs. “But I think what it did for me was provide for me an inner strength and … something I knew that I didn’t want to be. That’s why I’ll never be a promiscuous person, I’ll never be on drugs, I’ll never be too out of it to know what I’m doing or getting myself into. And because I saw all these things growing up, I went the other way.”
According to Mariah’s reps, the singer supported her sister “for decades,” including paying for Alison’s numerous stints in rehab. In 1994, Alison confirmed that this was true.
“Yes, she did [pay for rehab],” Alison said, “but she has never let me forget one single cent she has ever spent on me.” In 2005, when Alison was arrested for prostitution again, sources close to Mariah told The New York Post that the singer was “looking for Alison to want to help herself” and that she didn’t want to “enable” her sister’s behavior.
What Happened to Alison Carey?
In 2015, when a home invasion attack left her needing expensive brain and spine surgery, Alison pleaded for Mariah’s aid.
“Mariah I love you, and I desperately need your help,” she said in a video published by The Daily Mail. “Please don’t abandon me like this.”
After the attack, which left her severely brain damaged, Alison was checked into a mental hospital. Morgan told The Daily Mail that Alison was showing “problematic behavior” due to not getting adequate medical care.
“Alison was institutionalized for observation after being found wandering in the street barefoot and partially dressed, causing the police to be concerned,” he said. “Her behavior was caused as a result of damage done in the attack and her having missed the medications she was taking.”
Morgan said that he hoped Mariah would step in and save her. “The worst is yet to come and Mariah has it in her power to at least ensure a soft landing and avoid a lifetime of regret about missing this opportunity to forgive and help her only sister,” he said. In a 2016 interview The Sun, he even called Mariah “evil” for not doing enough to help.
“Your sister is dying and she is struggling and where are you?” he added. “You think you are so fabulous, but you are a witch… She is evil.” He later told Inside Edition that same year that the pop star only “cares about herself.” He said, “I would hope Mariah could find it in her heart to forgive Alison for her transgressions and step up, create a trust, let’s make sure Alison’s needs are met.”
Alison was staying at a women’s sobriety house in January 2017, according to HVNN.com. She was drug-free and working on a book about her childhood about racism and the occult, which she said would be “shocking to people.”
“There were a lot of really bad things happening,” she said in the interview. “Being drug-free makes things easier to remember — to know it’s not something I’m making up or dreaming about. This is real stuff.”
In the same interview, she hinted that the “shocking stuff” happening to her as a young girl was the real reason she left home at such a young age.
“I’m not the only woman who’s gone through those types of horrific, unbelievably frightening things,” she said. “I left the country at 15 to get married just to get away and escape. It was such bad stuff, but there are many other people who have gone through similar things, and they’ve been afraid to mention them to anyone and having someone write a book who says, ‘That happened to me, too,’ can make it better and make them feel safe.”
Mariah Carey Discussed Alison in Her 2020 Memoir
The “All I Want For Christmas” hitmaker detailed the alleged “neglect” she experienced from her family in her 2020 memoir, The Meaning of Mariah Carey. In the book, she referred to Morgan and Alison as her “ex-brother and ex-sister.” She also said that it was “emotionally and physically safer for me not to have any contact” with her siblings.
Alison filed a lawsuit against Mariah in February 2021 for what she wrote about her in the book. She asked for a minimum of $1.25 million for “the 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.”
Alison alleged in the suit that Mariah “has publicly acknowledged plaintiff’s vulnerability. In stories published several weeks prior to the release of her book, defendant was quoted as saying plaintiff is ‘damaged’ and ‘very broken.’ But despite that, defendant user her status as a public figure to attack her penniless sister, generating sensational headlines describing her lurid claims to promote sales of her book.”
“Defendant’s cruel and outrageous allegations have devastated the plaintiff. 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 and now struggles, after a long time clean, with alcohol abuse,” the suit claimed.
The suit was ongoing at the time of Alison’s death in 2024.
Mariah Carey Confirmed Alison Carey’s Death
Mariah confirmed Alison died at 62 years old on the same day as Patricia’s death at 87 years old in a statement to People on August 26, 2024.
“My heart is broken that I’ve lost my mother this past weekend. Sadly, in a tragic turn of events, my sister lost her life on the same day,” she said. “I feel blessed that I was able to spend the last week with my mom before she passed. I appreciate everyone’s love and support and respect for my privacy during this impossible time.”
Neither Alison’s nor Patricia’s cause of death has been revealed.
