Emotional Bobby Brown Admits He Once Hit Wife Whitney Houston and Details Using Drugs while Daughter Bobbi Kristina Was Nearby

Bobby Brown says that while he once hit ex-wife Whitney Houston, he is not “a violent man.”

Speaking of an incident he details in his upcoming memoir, Every Little Step, out June 13, Brown told Robin Roberts during his 20/20 interview that he struck Houston during a time while he was “trying to maintain sobriety.”

Brown charged that reports of him being a “woman beater” or overall “violent toward her,” however, are “just lies.”

“I’ve never been a violent man toward a woman ever,” Brown said.

The 47-year-old was married to Houston, who died in 2012 at age 48, for 15 years. In 2003, Brown was reportedly charged with misdemeanor battery related to alleged domestic violence. Houston had asserted to Redbook years earlier, though, “I do the hitting.”

In addition to a volatile romance, which ended in 2006 when Houston filed for divorce, Brown said that he and the pop star had devolved into a pattern of drug abuse. Brown and Houston would lock themselves in one wing of their mansion, getting high while nannies cared for their daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown just rooms over.

“I always made it a point to not let her see me or my wife in that type of situation,” he insisted, though. “It’s hard when you’re doing it everyday, it’s really hard.”

In his book, according to 20/20, Brown cites cocaine, alcohol and crack-laced joints as his substances of choice.

“The last few years of our marriage it was terrible,” he explained. “Both of us trying to be clean, or one of us trying to be clean… it was terrible.”

Of involving Bobbi Kristina, Brown admitted, “We could have been better. We should have been better.”

Brown, who is now drug-free, also slammed longtime rumors that it was he who led Houston to drug abuse. “It wasn’t me who started her,” Brown said. “I take my part and I take it hard for me even being a part of it, but we all have our own minds and some of us are stronger than others. Read more people