A year and a half after she released a memoir revealing she was the victim of incest at the hands of her singer father, Mackenzie Phillips is still dealing with the fallout — a decided chill from family members, a psyche still bruised over criticism about her confession.
The 51-year-old former child star has updated her best-selling autobiography, “High on Arrival,” to address the resulting storm that came from writing that her father coaxed her into bed on the eve of her wedding night, and continued an incestuous affair with her for 10 years. Her folk-rock star father, “Papa John” Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, died in 2001.
Speaking with Phillips live on TODAY Tuesday, Meredith Vieira told the actress she was surprised she didn’t see the fallout coming over her hair-raising story.
(Moral: never REALLY tell the truth…)
“I think I was very naïve,” Phillips told Vieira. “I expected, certainly, people to go, ‘Oh, that is so crazy.’ What I didn’t expect was the deeply cruel things that were said … ‘Mackenzie Phillips banged her dad,’ or the blogs that I read.”
Perhaps less surprising was the family reaction to Phillips’ publicly airing her incest story. While Phillips told Vieira she has received waves of support from other incest victims and has unwavering support from her mother Susan Adams, other parts of her extended family are now lost to her. Her brother Jeff and celebrity stepsisters Chynna and Bijou Phillips no longer speak to her, while her stepmother, actress and former Mamas & the Papas singer Michelle Phillips, has repeatedly lambasted her incest story.
In a statement to TODAY, Michelle Phillips said: “After 35 years of a needle up her arm (including several months while she was pregnant) it’s difficult to believe much of her story … she has hurt everyone in her family tremendously and apparently feels no guilt or shame in doing it or over how she decided to deal with her … umm … ’memories.’ ”
Shown the quote from her stepmother, Phillips sighed and said, “Oh, Mich.
“Maybe I’m naïve, but I’m an eternal optimist. And I certainly didn’t expect such vitriol from someone who’s expected and thought of as such a classy woman,” she told Vieira.
Speaking with TODAY’s Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford later in the show, Phillips said Michelle Phillips’ comments may be the result of her stepmother’s “protecting a legendary rock band of which she was a huge part.”
“I’m very disappointed in Michelle, because she’s known me since I was 4 years old,” she told Kotb and Gifford. “She has known about the incest for many years, and yet she chooses to try to discredit me publicly.
The rest of the interview is here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41715577/ns/today-today_people/
What is interesting is not only where Phillips is now headed with all this (read the rest of the story)…but the reactions of the ostrich-public….this response, for instance..
My ex had the same intentions for my daughter as John had for Mckenzie. A couple counselors explained to me the way a pedophile works. They groom the victim over a period of months or years, heaping flattery, money and gifts on the child while gradually building up the level of sexual contact. If my ex could have gotten away with giving my child drugs or alcohol, he would have used that too as a way of getting his way with her. I finally broke up with him over his cheating on me and left, but my child did not tell me about the abuse until long after. We went to the authorities but nothing happened. We ended up leaving the community because we got the same reaction from people that Mackenzie got. Most people are very ignorant about how this works and the coersion methods rapists and pedophiles use. These people blame the victim. Also I found that if the perpetrator is a highly respected person, like John Phillips was, then some people (usually men) refuse to let it into their head that the abuser is just that. They want to keep the person on the pedestal they’ve put him or her on. Then there’s other dynamics like there are actually people who don’t see anything wrong with rape, child abuse, or incest. I know this sounds crazy, but I was yelled at for saying using a child for sexual gratification was just plain wrong. These people think all sex is good, no matter who is involved and whether it’s consensual or not. Sometimes I think I live in a horribly sick world. My support is with Mackenzie and I think she’s brave for saying what needed to be said. God bless her.
I
And this..
I tend to believe her, that is just too big of a tale to make up. She didn’t sue the family over it, although (I’m sure that) she did make money from a book & appearances. But she felt that the secret should have been revealed, as she must have been suffering for years over it in silence. She was right in doing so.
Incest happens more often than we may think (or want to). The only thing that I hope for in her life is healing & inner peace with herself and her son, who by chance supports her. And to stay clean from her addictions, which is a huge battle for anyone with the disease.
And that one day, she is welcomed back to her family.
Cat
I leave it up to you to make the deteminations on what really happend. All I can say is how easy it is for people to take a set of circimstances and place it in boxes formatted so they can accept the story….not matter what the truth is…
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The Today Show: Mackenzie Phillips: Reaction to incest revelation ‘deeply cruel’
A year and a half after she released a memoir revealing she was the victim of incest at the hands of her singer father, Mackenzie Phillips is still dealing with the fallout — a decided chill from family members, a psyche still bruised over criticism about her confession.
The 51-year-old former child star has updated her best-selling autobiography, “High on Arrival,” to address the resulting storm that came from writing that her father coaxed her into bed on the eve of her wedding night, and continued an incestuous affair with her for 10 years. Her folk-rock star father, “Papa John” Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, died in 2001.
Speaking with Phillips live on TODAY Tuesday, Meredith Vieira told the actress she was surprised she didn’t see the fallout coming over her hair-raising story.
(Moral: never REALLY tell the truth…)
“I think I was very naïve,” Phillips told Vieira. “I expected, certainly, people to go, ‘Oh, that is so crazy.’ What I didn’t expect was the deeply cruel things that were said … ‘Mackenzie Phillips banged her dad,’ or the blogs that I read.”
Perhaps less surprising was the family reaction to Phillips’ publicly airing her incest story. While Phillips told Vieira she has received waves of support from other incest victims and has unwavering support from her mother Susan Adams, other parts of her extended family are now lost to her. Her brother Jeff and celebrity stepsisters Chynna and Bijou Phillips no longer speak to her, while her stepmother, actress and former Mamas & the Papas singer Michelle Phillips, has repeatedly lambasted her incest story.
In a statement to TODAY, Michelle Phillips said: “After 35 years of a needle up her arm (including several months while she was pregnant) it’s difficult to believe much of her story … she has hurt everyone in her family tremendously and apparently feels no guilt or shame in doing it or over how she decided to deal with her … umm … ’memories.’ ”
Shown the quote from her stepmother, Phillips sighed and said, “Oh, Mich.
“Maybe I’m naïve, but I’m an eternal optimist. And I certainly didn’t expect such vitriol from someone who’s expected and thought of as such a classy woman,” she told Vieira.
Speaking with TODAY’s Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford later in the show, Phillips said Michelle Phillips’ comments may be the result of her stepmother’s “protecting a legendary rock band of which she was a huge part.”
“I’m very disappointed in Michelle, because she’s known me since I was 4 years old,” she told Kotb and Gifford. “She has known about the incest for many years, and yet she chooses to try to discredit me publicly.
The rest of the interview is here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41715577/ns/today-today_people/
What is interesting is not only where Phillips is now headed with all this (read the rest of the story)…but the reactions of the ostrich-public….this response, for instance..
My ex had the same intentions for my daughter as John had for Mckenzie. A couple counselors explained to me the way a pedophile works. They groom the victim over a period of months or years, heaping flattery, money and gifts on the child while gradually building up the level of sexual contact. If my ex could have gotten away with giving my child drugs or alcohol, he would have used that too as a way of getting his way with her. I finally broke up with him over his cheating on me and left, but my child did not tell me about the abuse until long after. We went to the authorities but nothing happened. We ended up leaving the community because we got the same reaction from people that Mackenzie got. Most people are very ignorant about how this works and the coersion methods rapists and pedophiles use. These people blame the victim. Also I found that if the perpetrator is a highly respected person, like John Phillips was, then some people (usually men) refuse to let it into their head that the abuser is just that. They want to keep the person on the pedestal they’ve put him or her on. Then there’s other dynamics like there are actually people who don’t see anything wrong with rape, child abuse, or incest. I know this sounds crazy, but I was yelled at for saying using a child for sexual gratification was just plain wrong. These people think all sex is good, no matter who is involved and whether it’s consensual or not. Sometimes I think I live in a horribly sick world. My support is with Mackenzie and I think she’s brave for saying what needed to be said. God bless her.
I
And this..
I tend to believe her, that is just too big of a tale to make up. She didn’t sue the family over it, although (I’m sure that) she did make money from a book & appearances. But she felt that the secret should have been revealed, as she must have been suffering for years over it in silence. She was right in doing so.
Incest happens more often than we may think (or want to). The only thing that I hope for in her life is healing & inner peace with herself and her son, who by chance supports her. And to stay clean from her addictions, which is a huge battle for anyone with the disease.
And that one day, she is welcomed back to her family.
Cat
I leave it up to you to make the deteminations on what really happend. All I can say is how easy it is for people to take a set of circimstances and place it in boxes formatted so they can accept the story….not matter what the truth is…
Like this: