Tragic Details About The Phillips Family

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

When viewers tuned in to The Oprah Winfrey Show to see Mackenzie Phillips promote her memoir, High on Arrival, they certainly expected her to tease the contents of the yet-to-be-released book, particularly her years of struggling with substance abuse issues. Mackenzie obliged, but she also dropped the bombshell (via CNN) that years earlier, when she was 17 or 18, she awoke from a drug-triggered blackout in the middle of being raped by her father, John Phillips. She confronted him, she recalled, and he reportedly denied the assault, claiming that they had "made love." Mackenzie reflected to Winfrey, "I thought, wow, I'm really on my own here."

For the next 10 years, while Mackenzie was deep into a dependence on drugs, she allegedly experienced a series of assaults. "It didn't happen every day ... but it certainly happened many times," she said. "If you're me, you box it away. It's one of those things where you tell yourself don't look. There's a video reel playing in my head, and I've spent 30 years trying not to look." When she was 29, their relationship appeared to turn "consensual," but as Mackenzie explained, "It was the Stockholm syndrome where you begin to love your captor." 

John apparently tried to talk Mackenzie into moving to a foreign country and raising his younger children together. However, the actor finally broke free of the situation when she became pregnant and didn't know if the child's father was her dad or her husband. She ultimately terminated the pregnancy, and said, "I never let [John] touch me again."

If you or someone you know has been the victim of sexual assault, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit RAINN.org for additional resources.

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