Years after Mackenzie Phillips revealed she’d had an incestuous
relationship with her father, Mamas & Papas singer John Phillips,
the actress says her family is still shunning her.
“(A) family member was angered that I might attend (a birthday party),
and I was told she was just not willing to forgive me yet,” Phillips,
57, wrote in her new book, “Hopeful Healing: Essays on Managing Recovery
and Surviving Addiction,” according to People.
“She wouldn’t forgive me! For abuses perpetrated against me as a child, or for exposing those abuses perhaps.”
The “One Day at a Time” star revealed in 2009 that her father had first
raped her in a hotel room in the late 1970s when she was just 18 years
old and high on drugs.
The relationship then continued for 10 years consensually, Phillips wrote in her first book, “High on Arrival.”
They ended the relationship only after Mackenzie Phillips became
pregnant and didn’t know whether the baby’s father was her husband or
her own father.
John Phillips paid for the abortion, Mackenzie Phillips told Oprah Winfrey in 2009.
But family members attacked the actress. Some accused her of lying.
Others questioned why she waited until her father couldn’t defend
himself against the allegations — John Phillips died in 2001.
Today, Mackenzie Phillips says her family blames her for the relationship and has ostracized her.
“I’ve come to understand that some in my family have chosen to hold on
to the pain and anger they felt when I came out with the truth about my
dad. I understand that they’re still caught in a textbook response of
devaluing the victim and holding up the perpetrator,” Phillips wrote in “Hopeful Healing: Essays on Managing Recovery and Surviving Addiction.”
“I’ve also had to accept that, of course, I’d be the target of negative
reactions and feelings because I’m the one who wrote the book and told a
truth no one wanted to hear. If you’re trying to maintain some sort of
façade so you can avoid pain, the last thing you want is for the façade
to be demolished.”
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