Study Time: 4 minutes
Kathy Griffin understands Romy Reiner’s fear for her brother.
In December, the gruesome murders of Michele and Rob Reiner led to the arrest of their son, Nick.
Since then, critics have speculated on every choice the parents made before their tragic deaths.
Kathy returns the applause – recalling the alleged crimes and death of her older “child abuser” brother, and how she almost tore her family apart.
Kathy Griffin is all too familiar with what the Reiner family must have gone through over the years
Content warning: the topics of both domestic violence and child sexual abuse (CSA) are both sadly intertwined in this article.
Shortly after his arrest, reports shed light on 32-year-old Nick Reiner’s diagnosis of schizophrenia and his long battle with substance abuse.
On her YouTube channel, Kathy Griffin shares her family’s struggles. His older brother, Kenneth, played a role for most of his life until his death in 2001.
Kathy is not one to mince words. He calls his late brother “a wife-beater.”
He hasn’t spoken much about his brother since his first book, which came out in 2009. At that time, his family was upset that he was spreading dirty clothes in this way.
“Yes, my older brother, Kenneth – who is now deceased, thank God – was a crack addict,” Kathy told her fans.
“He lived on the streets, extremely violent,” he explained.
According to Kathy, her late older brother “probably had an unknown mental illness, which obviously didn’t go hand in hand with crack cocaine.”
Sometimes, people medicate themselves with substances, legal or otherwise, that relieve certain symptoms. In some cases, things make a bad situation worse.
“I can only tell you it was painful to see my parents trying to save him for the rest of his life,” said Kathy. The problems, he said, started when Kenneth was young.
Over the years, Kathy Griffin watched as her parents struggled to figure out how to react to the accusations of her late older brother. Even overcoming denial didn’t show them the right way to “fix” him. (Image Credit: YouTube)According to him, Kenneth was ‘violent’ and a ‘rapist’.
“I’ll tell you I remember from when I was 10 years old,” Kathy Griffin recalled. “His first wife told me alone that he beat her so badly that it was almost beyond comprehension.
As an adult, Kathy knows that this was an unusual and inappropriate thing to say to a 10-year-old under most circumstances. However, crying for help does not always make sense.
She remembers her former sister-in-law telling her that Kenneth would “beat her and take her out of their house naked.”
Kathy continued: “And he was always locked outside their house, where there was a yard, beaten and naked.”
“Kenneth’s longtime girlfriend” also describes him as “violent.” However, he had more to reveal – something that haunts Kathy to this day.
“His girlfriend told me that he molested one boy and one girl she knew,” said Kathy.
“So with all the ways the Trumpers use the word ‘pedo’ and all the things we’ve learned about Jeffrey Epstein,” he noted.
Kathy insisted: “Let me tell you something, having your older brother be a molester is something you will never grow out of.”
He explained bluntly: “You don’t finish, I wanted to kill him because all I could think about were those children.
Kathy continued: “And the saying, ‘blood is thicker than water,’ wasn’t true for me. I didn’t give a f–k that he was my older brother. And I didn’t want to protect him.”
After all of her experiences with her older brother, Kathy Griffin doesn’t want to hear anyone trying to bully the Reiners. (Image Credit: YouTube)Saying that the Reiners should have had in-house security or anything else does nothing but suspect two murder victims
Kathy Griffin went on to admit that she spent years “always estranged” from her family because of their constant contact with Kenneth. They seemed to be in denial at times, blaming all his actions on drug use.
Although Kathy contacted authorities several times, she said the LAPD “will never do anything about it” unless the victim comes forward.
Kathy said her father once intervened when Kenneth became violent in front of the family. It didn’t “fix” him, but it stopped his brother in his tracks for now.
At one point, Kathy recalled, her father called Kenneth and told him he “really thinks he’s a child abuser.” According to Kathy, her brother replied: “I do what I do.”
As someone who spent years hearing such horrifying words and avoiding the monster in her family, Kathy doesn’t want to hear anyone second-guessing or criticizing the victim Rob and Michele Reiner.
