Warning: this article includes details about instances of rape and incest
“One Day at a Time” actress Mackenzie Phillips revealed she’s faced online “trolling” since forgiving her father for years of incest.
Speaking candidly in a sit-down interview with her sister Chynna Phillips Baldwin published Wednesday, the former child star and author of tell-all recovery memoir “High on Arrival” detailed why she chose to forgive her father, The Mamas & the Papas frontman John Phillips, for what she’s alleged was a decade-spanning sexual relationship.
“Dad was something else,” Phillips said. “I get a lot of trolling online, for having forgiveness in my heart. Forgiveness, because forgiving is for me, not for the other person. And forgiving doesn’t mean I cosign or agree with what I’m forgiving him for.”
Phillips first discussed her relationship with her father in her 2009 memoir. In the book, Phillips stated her father raped her inside a hotel room when she was 18. At the time, she’d passed out following a drug binge. Afterward, their sexual interactions went on for a decade and ended when she got pregnant and didn’t know who the unborn child’s father was. After getting an abortion, she said she never let her father “touch” her again.
“It’s very, very complicated,” Phillips Baldwin said, who shares John Phillips as a father and is Mackenzie’s half-sister. “Obviously he’s an amazing songwriter, and I loved his laugh. And yet there was this whole other side to Dad that was, I mean, kind of like a monster.”
“Very, very dark, dark side,” Phillips agreed.
Despite the turmoil and losing some of the relationships she had with other family members, Phillips Baldwin said she maintained the support she had for her sister.
“I want you to know that when I stood by you, I meant it with all my heart. I really did,” she said. “And I believed you and I want you to know that I was proud of you for coming out even though it was painful for everybody.”
Watch the full interview here.
