Senator Kennedy, meet your son:
Mag: Ted K’s secret love child a secret no more
By Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
The National Enquirer splashes this week with a shocking story about Sen. Ted Kennedy’s secret love child with a Cape Cod woman whom the mag says he dated during his days as a swinging single.
According to the tabloid’s source, the boy, named Christopher, just celebrated his 21st birthday and is “mature enough to make his own choices about his background and biological father.”
A Kennedy family confidante told the Enquirer, “This is one of the biggest secrets in the Kennedy family and known to only a few people including Ted’s ex-wife, Joan.”
As for the senator, his spokesgal Melissa Wagoner last night called the tabloid tale “irresponsible fiction.”
Here’s the story according to the Enquirer: Back in 1983, Kennedy, then 51, took up with Caroline Bilodeau, an attractive brunette, several months before divorcing Joan, the mother of his three kids — Kara, Ted Jr. and Patrick.
Bilodeau’s friends told the Enquirer the local lass became so smitten with the senator, she “had dreams about being the next Mrs. Ted Kennedy.” But the love affair came crashing down when Bilodeau told Ted a baby was on the way, the mag reports.
“Caroline announced to the family that she was two months pregnant around May 1984,” blabbed a Bilodeau confidante. “Ted was not happy about the news. He already had three kids with Joan and knew a baby out of wedlock could hurt him politically.”
According to the Enquirer, the scandal-scarred senator begged Bilodeau to have an abortion, but she refused.
“He told her he couldn’t undergo another scandal — not after Chappaquiddick, not so close to his divorce from Joan” said the source. “He was very angry when she defied him and had the child.”
During her pregnancy, Caroline’s friends noticed the unemployed young woman who lived with her parents bought a black Mustang convertible, an expensive Shar-pei puppy and moved into her own apartment.
“Later we learned she received about $15,000 from someone in the Kennedy camp,” said the friend.
When Christopher was born in a Cape Cod hospital in December 1984, Kennedy was nowhere near the delivery room. But he did, according to the Enquirer, take a paternity test shortly thereafter to determine if the child was his.
After Bilodeau got the results, she moved back in with her parents but “always seemed to have money,” said the source.
Kennedy’s former flame did eventually find love with a man she met in a pizzeria. They married and he legally adopted Christopher and raised him as his own son, sources said.
“She has always been very protective of Christopher and wanted him to have a normal life, not the life a Kennedy lives,” said the friend.
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