The Mamas & The Papas

This week it was revealed by Mackenzie Phillips, the daughter of John Phillips from the 1960’s band ‘The Mamas & The Papas’, that she had a 10-year incestuous relationship with her father, after being molested at the age of 18.

In her new book ‘High on Arrival’ Mackenzie confessed to being raped at the age of 19 by her father which later led to a consensual relationship, during their life of drugs.

During an interview with Oprah Winfrey, the musicians daughter revealed that on the eve of her wedding, her father went to see her determined to stop the marriage going ahead.  After the two of them had taken a cocktail of drugs, McKenzie passed out and awoke with her father on top of her.

This led to further episodes during their epic drug taking sessions, where she revealed that she would often wake up with her pants around her ankles and her father asleep next to her in bed.

The affair ended when McKenzie became pregnant and had no idea if the child belonged to her husband or her father, who paid for her to have an abortion, and she says she never let him touch her again.

Phillips allegedly taught his daughter to roll joints at the age of just ten-years-old, leading her to try cocaine for the first time at eleven.  The troubled woman then revealed that her father was the first one to ’shoot her up’ with heroine!

After everything this woman went through as a child and into her adult life, she still defends her father, insisting that he was not a bad man he was a sick man.  Believe me, he was a bad man, and most definitely a very sick man, he abused his own daughter rather than protect her.

McKenzie does her best to stop the hatred of  Papa John, stating that neglect can lead you onto drug abuse and to live your life the way that he did, but I can’t help feeling that’s wrong.  From personal experiences I believe that you will try to do the opposite, you would kill to protect your child and would do the best you could to give them the innocent childhood you never had.

I think the book is McKenzie’s way of closing this chapter of her life, and I can understand the feelings she still has for her father, but the abuse she suffered at the hands of this man, no child should ever go through that.  One more point I would like to make too all those people that seem to think that drug addiction is a disease, it’s not, it’s a choice, cancer is a disease you can say yes or no to drugs!

John Phillips died in March, 2001, at the age of 65, from heart failure at his Los Angeles home after years of alcohol and drug abuse.