Before today, High on Arrival, the new memoir by childhood actress Mackenzie Phillips, would scarcely have made a blip on the celebrity gossip radar.
Now, due to a startling admission, it may become a best-seller.
In the biography, Mackenzie says her father – John Phillips of the 1960s band The Mamas and the Papas – raped her when she was 19 years old.
“On the eve of my wedding, my father showed up, determined to stop it,” writes Phillips. “I had tons of pills, and Dad had tons of everything too. Eventually I passed out on Dad’s bed… I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father.”
She continues:
“Had this happened before? I didn’t know. All I can say is it was the first time I was aware of it. For a moment I was in my body, in that horrible truth, and then I slid back into a blackout.”
Phillips says her dad would speak openly about running off to Fiji together, while she would simply think “we’re going to hell for this.”
Any admission made in a memoir must be questioned. Is the individual making up a story just to sell a book? We have no way of knowing for certain, especially because John Phillips died in 2001.
Mackenzie says she confronted her dad on his death bed and said: “We have to talk about when you raped me.”
His reply: “You mean when we made love?”
Positively disgusting.