Featured Image Credit: Kathy Griffin via YouTube
Topics: Crime, Mental Health, US News
Liv Bridge
Warning: This article contains discussion of child abuse, domestic abuse, sexual assault and drug addiction which some readers may find distressing.
Comedian Kathy Griffin has revealed she wanted to kill her brother after finding out he was a pedophile.
The 65-year-old American comedian shot to fame in the 1990s for her stand-up works and improv comedy troupe, The Groundlings, before landing her iconic role in the sitcom Seinfeld and her own reality TV show, Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List.
However, what some fans might not know is that Griffin had a rather traumatizing childhood, after learning at the age of 10 years old that her brother, Kenneth, was a pedophile.
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In an interview with podcast The Skinny Confidential earlier this year, she said: "It was just a very heavy thing, it was very divisive in my family, obviously.
"I have a tremendous amount of empathy for my mom and dad because I know that my dad did not molest my brother - he was molested by a coach and a priest.
"I have the most empathy for his victims though."
Now, the star is opening up even more about the painful chapter of her life in a new YouTube video as part of her series, Talk Your Head Off, where she revealed she even regularly called the cops on her brother.
After paying tribute to Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, who were stabbed to death in their LA home earlier this month, where their son, Nick, stands accused of their murder, Griffin turned to talk about her own family.
“I’m going to open up to you about something now that I haven’t really talked about since my first book. When I talked about it, the rest of my family was very, very upset with me,” she said, referring to her memoir, Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin.
“Well, my eldest brother, Kenneth - who is now dead, thank God - he was a crack addict, he lived on the streets, was extremely violent. [He] probably had an undiagnosed mental illness that obviously did not go well with crack cocaine.”
"I can just tell you it was heartbreaking watching my parents try to save him his whole life."
After learning about Kenneth's alleged violent behavior, when his ex-wife and a former girlfriend told Griffin that he had 'beaten' them, she was then told by another former partner that 'he was molesting one boy and one girl that she knew of'.
The My Life On the D-List star claimed she went on to call police 'like once a week' but that the cops 'wouldn't do anything'.
Griffin claimed cops told her they would only take action if the children came forward.
She added that she wasn't sure if any of her relatives knew she did that 'to this day.'
“So, for all the ways that the Trumpers use the word ‘pedo,’ and all the stuff we have learned about Jeffrey Epstein, let me tell you something. Having your oldest brother be a pedophile is something that you don’t ever grow out of. You don’t get over it.
“I wanted to kill him because all I could think about were those children."
The star said she refused to see her brother, causing the family to have separate Christmases because she said she wasn't 'going to sit in a room with Kenneth once a year and act like he’s not a wife-beating pedophile'.
Kenneth died in 2001 from an overdose.
If you’ve been affected by any of these issues or want to speak to someone in confidence regarding the welfare of a child, the Childhelp USA National Child Abuse Hotline (1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453) operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receives calls from throughout the United States, Canada, US Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico.