Actress Mackenzie Phillips said in a memoir published that she
had a decade long incestuous affair with her father John Phillips,
the late singer with 1960s band The Mamas & the Papas.
In the memoir High On Arrival, which came out a year after she was
arrested for cocaine possession, Phillips writes that she first had
sex with her father at age 19, the night before her brief 1979
marriage to a member of the Rolling Stones' entourage.
The former star of TV sitcom One Day at a Time said she and her
father used drugs that night.
John Phillips died of heart failure in 2001.
"My father was not a man with boundaries," Phillips, 49,
writes.
"He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that
night to find myself having sex with my own father."
One of Phillips' four ex-wives cast doubt on her story; another
said it was unfortunate that she went public, while her
half-sister, pop singer Chynna Phillips, said she believed
it.
"I mean, who in their right mind would make such a claim if it
wasn't true," Chynna Phillips told US Weekly.
But Chynna's mother Michelle Phillips, the only surviving member of
the Mamas and Papas, said in a statement that whether her
relationship ... is delusional or not, the public disclosure is an
unfortunate circumstance and very hurtful for our entire
family.
In an interview with chat show host Oprah Winfrey that aired,
Mackenzie Phillips said that late in her relationship with her
father, she became pregnant and suspected that he might be the
unborn baby's dad.
"I had an abortion, and I never let him touch me again," she told
Winfrey.
Winfrey on her show read a statement from Genevieve Waite, who was
married to John Phillips during the time Mackenzie says she was
having sex with him and cast doubts on her account.
"John was a good man who had the disease of alcoholism and drug
addiction," Waite said in the statement.
"He was incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of
having such a relationship with his own child."
On Winfrey's show, Phillips also said she first tried cocaine at
age 11, and that her father injected the drug into her arm for the
first time when she was 16 or 17.
Late Wednesday, High On Arrival ranked at No 6 on online retailer
Amazon.com's list of bestselling books.
Phillips starred in One Day at a Time from 1975 to 1983 and has a
long history of drug abuse.
She was fired from the show at one point after undergoing drug
rehabilitation but then relapsing.
Her marriage to Jeff Sessler, who moved in the same circles as the
Rolling Stones, ended in 1981.
She has married twice since then, and has appeared sparingly in
TV dramas in recent years.
The Mamas & The Papas were one of the most popular bands of the
1960s, with hit songs such as California Dreamin' and Monday,
Monday.
