NEW YORK – Mackenzie Phillips is defending her father John Phillips as “a good man” despite her claims that they had an incestuous affair. But her stepmother Michelle Phillips says Phillips is lying about the affair and is just trying to cash in on her book.
The 49-year-old former child actress writes in her new book, “High on Arrival,” that she had a decade-long sexual relationship with her father, and alleges they had sex on the night before she was to get married in 1979 at age 19.
She wrote in her book: “I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father.” John Phillips, who died of heart failure in 2001, was the leader of the 1960s group the Mamas and the Papas.
Phillips, 49, who starred on TV’s “One Day at a Time,” said the sexual relationship with her father lasted a decade and ended when she became pregnant and didn’t know who had fathered the child. She had an abortion, for which her father paid.
Interviewed on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday, Phillips said it was “a very permissive time and a very rock ‘n’ roll world and pretty much anything went.” Her father “did the best he could,” she said.
Phillips, who said she first tried cocaine at age 11, said her father did drugs with her, taught her to roll joints and injected her with cocaine. Last October, Phillips pleaded guilty in Los Angeles to possessing cocaine and was ordered to complete an 18-month drug treatment program.
But her stepmother (and former Mamas and the Papas member) Michelle Phillips sharply differs with the sexual allegations.
“I have every reason to believe it’s untrue,” she told the Hollywood Reporter. “Mackenzie has a lot of mental illness. She’s had a needle stuck up her arm for 35 years. She was arrested for heroin and coke just recently. She did ‘Celebrity Rehab’ and now she writes a book. The whole thing is timed.”
Half-sister Chynna Phillips told US Weekly that Mackenzie Phillips told her about the sexual relationship in 1997.
“Do I believe that they had an incestuous relationship and that it went on for 10 years? Yes,” Chynna Phillips said.
But Genevieve Waite, John Phillips’ wife at the time of the alleged abuse and Mackenzie’s stepmother, said in a statement, “John was a good man who had the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction. He was incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child.”
During her “Today” appearance, Phillips pronounced herself drug-free, and she characterized the skepticism with which her book has been received as typical for a family visited by incest.
“The instinct is to brush it under the table. The instinct is to protect the abuser,” she said.
She characterized her book as a way to expose a problem that extends beyond the Phillips family, describing herself as “a voice for this large community of incest survivors that don’t know where to go or what to do or how to talk about what happened in their lives.”
As disgusting as it is, incest is nothing new. Its been going on for hundreds of years (or longer). Even Cleopatra had an incestuous relationship with her brother.
as Punjabee said, its been around. There are alot of creeps like that in the world. not to mention the child molestors who forcefully abuse their children sexually.
yes parezy... I read abnormal psychology at the age of 14-15. that incest thing is been around for ever.
Victims are always under 14-15 years old. Victims develop instant guilt and start thinking it as its their fault.
It almost never gets reported.
We all got to be vigilant.
There are places on this earth where it is still practiced and is more common than other places.
Even Bible accuses a 'prophet' to have committed this heinous act.
Incest has different meaning in different cultures. First cousin marriage is considered sort of incest in western societies...but like I mentioned above in some western societies it is quite common in various relationships.
Incest is indeed perceived differently in the west. As horrified as some here are about father-daughter, western societies view cousin relationships in the same light. (Not that I'm condoning it in any way!)
Father-daughter incest is a criminal act in any society I think. Or at least viewed as such. Yet, the victim (the child) will still love the parent-abuser. Children love their parents no matter how bad or good they are and nothing can change that - I think its probably programmed into the DNA or something. Theres almost nothing that can kill a child's love for their parent.
Are you saying parents having sex with their kids in India is common?
Like others have already pointed out incest has always gone on, it’s nothing new. In some ancient cultures it was actually very common and even encouraged.. Cleopatra married her brother at a young age and their parents were also brother and sister..
According to Islamic traditions, getting married to your cousin is fine coz a cousin is jsut like a na-mehram (stranger) to you. So, Islamically speaking theres no harm in getting married to your first or second cousins, in fact it is encouraged to get married in the family but in the west, since cousins are considered just as your siblings therefore it is considered as an incest.
