LOS ANGELES — Bobby Brown acknowledged in an interview with ABC's Robin Roberts that he felt he and his late ex-wife, Whitney Houston, had failed their daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, who died last year in a way eerily similar to her mother.
"We should have been better," Bobby Brown said in the interview, for a special edition for "20/20." "We could have been better."
Houston died on Feb. 11, 2012, after being found facedown in a water-filled bathtub with drug paraphernalia nearby. The Los Angeles County coroner ruled her death an accidental drowning.
Bobbi Kristina Brown's death, on July 26, 2015, was ruled to be from lobar pneumonia and lack of oxygen, resulting in brain damage. The 22-year-old was also found in a water-filled bathtub with a mix of drugs and alcohol in her system. She spent six months in a coma before she died.
The Brown family thought she was being manipulated by her friend Nick Gordon, who was rumored to be Houston's adopted son. Bobbi Kristina Brown called him her brother.
"It's not a mystery to me," Bobby Brown told Roberts. "The same thing that happened to my daughter is what happened to Whitney ... There's only one person that was around both occasions, only one person who says they were there to protect them ... and he didn't."
Hear more from Bobby Brown in a special 20/20 airing tonight on WSB-TV.