Mackenzie Phillips: I slept with my father

[Artemis]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/...n5331219.shtml

On "Oprah," Phillips spoke openly about the secret she'd been keeping for more than 31 years about the sexual relationship she claims she had with her father, beginning when she was in her late teens.

At one point, Phillips writes in "High on Arrival," "My father was not a man with boundaries. He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father."

John died in 2001 after a lifelong battle with drugs and alcohol.

Of cocaine, Mackenzie told Winfrey, "He put the needle in my arm and pushed the plunger in and he missed."

Creepy as hell! Apparently it started when she wasn't a kid but she says she woke up to find him raping her. It's going to be a lot harder to listen to California Dreaming.

[snapdragonfly]

I watched an episode of A&E's Biography on her last week - it told all about the drugs and how she slept with Mick Jagger and how her dad taught her how to shoot up but it didn't tell THAT part.

How horribly sordid and no wonder she's all NFBSK'ed up.

[landmammal]

I think it's strange she's saying "slept with" instead of "raped by".

[Admiraldinty]

I can't say I'm surprised by this. When I first heard about how she shot up with her father, I thought that it wouldn't be too far down the road of perversity to have sex with him.

[Artemis]

She seems to be viewing it as sort of consensual. I dunno. Maybe that's how she dealt with it? Portraying it as something she was choosing?

[MisterGrey]

Originally Posted by landmammal

I think it's strange she's saying "slept with" instead of "raped by".

From the CNN article:

"On the eve of my wedding, my father showed up, determined to stop it," writes Phillips, who was 19 at the time and a heavy drug user, according to People.com. "I had tons of pills, and Dad had tons of everything too. Eventually I passed out on Dad's bed."

Phillips, best known as Julie Cooper on the sitcom "One Day at a Time," says the sexual relationship became consensual as her life began to spiral out of control.

So it sounds like the first time they were both so out of it that neither one may have had a clue what was going on, and from there on out it was a consensual incestuous relationship.

[Arriah]

The MSNBC headline says that the relationship "eventually became consensual" (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32976391...t-celebrities/) so I suspect that's why she used that particular wording. Girl needs some counseling because I suspect strongly that the sex didn't actually become consensual, either it didn't happen at all outside of her book or he coerced her into thinking that she wanted it just like most other long term sexual abusers do.

[snapdragonfly]

Originally Posted by Arriah

The MSNBC headline says that the relationship "eventually became consensual" (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32976391...t-celebrities/) so I suspect that's why she used that particular wording. Girl needs some counseling because I suspect strongly that the sex didn't actually become consensual, either it didn't happen at all outside of her book or he coerced her into thinking that she wanted it just like most other long term sexual abusers do.

Yeah. When so much dysfunction and so much substance abuse starts so very young, she could be ripping his clothes off and jumping on him and I still wouldn't call it "consensual": I'd call it a case of a little girl who got tragically screwed up and wouldn't have known a normal and healthy relationship if it gave her a glass of milk. This is not a normal regular teenager exploring the back seat with her same age boyfriends, which I WOULD call consensual even if the law technically does not. This wasn't consensual because you have to be in your right mind to consent, and the poor thing never got a chance as a youngster to develop one.

[Lainie]

Originally Posted by Admiraldinty

I can't say I'm surprised by this. When I first heard about how she shot up with her father, I thought that it wouldn't be too far down the road of perversity to have sex with him.

I'm surprised that you wrote "she shot up with her father" and "to have sex with him" rather than "her father shot up with her" and "to have sex with her." I assume you didn't intend to imply that she was the instigator or the responsible party in either act.

[Ryda Wong, EBfCo.]

Originally Posted by MisterGrey

So it sounds like the first time they were both so out of it that neither one may have had a clue what was going on, and from there on out it was a consensual incestuous relationship.

E's coverage suggests otherwise:

Phillips says in her new memoir, High on Arrival (which she discussed with the daytime queen), that she confronted John, who died in March 2001, about their sordid past, saying, "We have to talk about when you raped me."

http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b145...d_by_papa.html

[Admiraldinty]

Originally Posted by Lainie

I'm surprised that you wrote "she shot up with her father" and "to have sex with him" rather than "her father shot up with her" and "to have sex with her." I assume you didn't intend to imply that she was the instigator or the responsible party in either act.

While I see your point regarding the latter (and that wasn't my intended meaning), I don't regarding the former. "She shot up with her father" connotes to me that John Phillips was doing drugs chronologically prior to her, and she later joined in. It doesn't necessarily say anything about agency, although it's likely he instigated it. However, YMMV.

[Sue Bee]

Originally Posted by snapdragonfly

Yeah. When so much dysfunction and so much substance abuse starts so very young, she could be ripping his clothes off and jumping on him and I still wouldn't call it "consensual": I'd call it a case of a little girl who got tragically screwed up and wouldn't have known a normal and healthy relationship if it gave her a glass of milk.snip .

This is a very good point, and very close to what I have read other long term incest/sex abuse survivors talk about, that at some point, the abused starts to accept the abuse as something that they agree to. Almost Stokholm Sydrome-esque.

[SatansHobbit]

Originally Posted by Artemis

It's going to be a lot harder to listen to California Dreaming.

Ugh, the lyrics to "I Saw Her Again (Last Night)" seem to have developed a horrible creepy undertone.

[snapdragonfly]

Originally Posted by SatansHobbit

Ugh, the lyrics to "I Saw Her Again (Last Night)" seem to have developed a horrible creepy undertone.

I am saddened. We had that album on our reel to reels that we played on the Teac my dad brought back from Asia when he came back from Vietnam - I was 5 I think - and I listened to it so much I still have every single note and lyric permanently inscribed in my memory.

Why are some artists so very very NFBSK'ed up?

[snopes]

It is not, Mackenzie Phillips said, either as simple or as reprehensible as the news stories make it seem. Her father, John Phillips, was not a monster, and that 10-year “affair” she is said to have had with him is not as easily categorized as it would seem.

She says it is true that on the night before her first marriage at the age of 18, she woke up in a drug-induced fog to find John Phillips having sex with her. And it is true that 10 years would go by before she finally stopped the incestuous relationship after she aborted a child because she didn’t know if it was her father’s or her husband’s. But, Phillips said, it is not accurate to describe that decade as a continuous relationship.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32999954...-today_people/

[Rebochan]

How...how does any of that mitigate what she said before?!

[RCIAG]

Mackenzie's brother Tamerlane has now weighed in on the issue though he's not exactly coherent either. Something about a guru or baba ganoush or something.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3z9C...layer_embedded

[Artemis]

Why is the date for that youtube video the 17th? I thought she didn't make the claims till the 23rd?

[Nana M]

Originally Posted by Artemis

Why is the date for that youtube video the 17th? I thought she didn't make the claims till the 23rd?

Baba Ganoush knows all and foresaw it?

What the heck was he talking about? It wasn't his sister, that's for sure.

[Jenn]

Originally Posted by Artemis

Why is the date for that youtube video the 17th? I thought she didn't make the claims till the 23rd?

She's been making the claim for a while, just not to everyone and not so publicly. Phillips was on Oprah on the 23rd, but that was filmed in advance. That was also the release date of High on Arrival, but physical copies had existed and advance copies would have gone out in the last couple weeks. Phillips may also have given her family forewarning about what was going to be in the book, allowing Tamerlane to get that video up before the book was widely available.