The act of incest is something that is often written off as deeds that took place back in the days, but in truth, the shameful act is still being carried out around the world to this age. One good example that happened in America was that of Mackenzie Phillips and her sexual relationship with her father. It was one of the most shocking events that rocked the world in 2009. The incestuous affair which she had discussed in her book was expounded by when she visited her show in 2009. The implication of her revelations continues to live with her until today. Read on as we unravel the story down to the details.
Mackenzie Phillips’ Famous Childhood
Laura Mackenzie Phillips was born on the 10th of November 1975 into fame and affluence as the child of John Phillips, one of the four members of the music group The Mamas & the Papas, while her mother Susan Adams lived a relatively quiet life. Mackenzie was born in Virginia but sometime during her childhood, the family moved to California, where she had her high school education.
Mackenzie Phillips grew to always be in the spotlight, by the time she was twelve, she had already started a career in acting, with her performance as Carol Morrison in American Graffiti. She had always been in the news for her controversial lifestyle and drug abuse. But in September of 2009, the story of her drug abuse was dimmed in comparison to her confession of an incestuous relationship, one that she had with her father.
Mackenzie Phillips’ Sexual Relationship With Her Father
After spending a lot of time in rehab for her addiction problems, Mackenzie Phillips decided to write a memoir on the struggle she had with addiction and the journey to her recovery. High on Arrival, which is what her memoir is called, was published in September of 2009. In the same month of its publication, Oprah Winfrey, who ran a book club of some sorts during her show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, invited Mackenzie and they had a one hour talk on the book.
For viewers of the show and particularly Oprah, a certain part of the book held the most interest for them. This part of the book was her description of the true nature of the relationship between herself and her father. According to Phillips, she had woken up from a blackout only to find herself being raped by her father in his hotel room, but she blacked out once more and when she woke up the next day she was back in her own hotel room.
She had spoken to him about it but he did not describe his action as rape, rather as lovemaking. Mackenzie Phillips says that although they didn’t have sex everyday or week, they had sex a lot during the ten-year period that they were sleeping with each other, it was already consensual by the time she was twenty-nine years old.
Phillips stated that she suffered from Stockholm syndrome, as she knew that she was in an abusive relationship with a man who had defiled her but she started to love him regardless of his abuse. From what she stated in her book, sex was not the only thing they shared; he had also introduced her to drugs early in her life, drugs that led her down the path of addiction.
The biggest surprise of Mackenzie Phillips and her sexual relationship with her father was the fact that he had attempted to romanticize their relationship by asking her to move to Fiji, as they could live there as husband and wife without judgment, this irritated Mackenzie but did not make her put a stop to it. Even when she got married to another man, they continued to have sex and it was not until she got pregnant and could not say if the child she was carrying was her father’s or her husband’s, that she decided on abortion and to end the sexual relationship they were having. By the time her memoir was released, John Phillips was already dead; he had been dead for eight years at the time, so, he could neither negate nor confirm what Mackenzie had said.
The story of Mackenzie Phillips and her sexual relationship with her father was met with resistance from two of his ex-wives who claimed she was lying, while her siblings and Denny Doherty, the only other male member of The Mamas and the Papas, verified that she was not lying. Doherty claimed that Phillips had confided in him before his death.
