UPDATE, MAY 19, 4:12 P.M.: The attorney for Brea's Tousignant family, which earlier this week found itself at the center of the media speculation over the identity of Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child, has issued a statement with a simple message for that same media:
Leave the Tousignant family alone.
Todd F. Nevell's message follows after the jump . . .
]
BREA YOUTH FALSELY IDENTIFIED AS SCHWARZENEGGER “LOVE CHILD” AND DEFAMED BY FALSE MEDIA REPORTSOn May 17, 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported that Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted to fathering a child with “a former household staff member more than a decade ago.” While the staff member was not identified by name, she was described as having “worked for the family for 20 years,” retiring in January 2011.
Thereafter, both Gawker.com of Gawker Media and Wendy Leigh of the Daily Mail reported that Tanner Tousignant, age 18, from Brea, California, is the illegitimate “love child” of Arnold Schwarzenegger and that Tanner's mother, Tammy Tousignant, is the female household employee with whom Arnold Schwarzenegger admitted having an extramarital affair and fathering a child.
These claims are absolutely false and have now been re-published by hundreds of news agencies and online websites worldwide.
Tammy Tousignant has been married to Tom Tousignant since 1992. From 1987 to 1999, she was employed as a flight attendant for Arnold Schwarzenegger. She was never employed as a household staff member for Schwarzenegger. She categorically denies ever having been involved in an extramarital affair with Schwarzenegger and neither of her children were fathered by Schwarzenegger.
During Schwarzenegger's run for California Governor in 2003, Wendy Leigh of the Daily Mail published an article in which she falsely claimed that Tammy Tousignant had been “Arnold's lover” and that Schwarzenegger–and not her husband Tom–was Tanner's father. The article also falsely claimed that Tammy was fired from her job after Maria Shriver “got wind of Tammy's affair with Arnold.” In response to the false allegations contained in the Daily Mail article, Tammy Tousignant voluntarily submitted to a polygraph test and Tom Tousignant submitted to a DNA test, both of which confirmed that Tom was Tanner's biological father. The Tousignants also hired a lawyer to pursue an action for defamation against the parties responsible for spreading false statements.
The Tousignants are represented by Todd F. Nevell of Scolinos, Scolinos & Sheldon in Pasadena, California, and request that the media respect their privacy.
Todd F. Nevell
Attorney for the Tousignant Family
UPDATE, MAY 19, 9:35 A.M.: Whoa, who saw this one coming?
First, you have to sit through a short live-action clip, in which Maria Shriver's last name is mispronounced and the Taiwanese animators obviously believe former housekeeper Patty Baena is a güera.
But hang out until the end of The Sperminator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger– brought to you by those jolly virtual pranksters at Next Media Animation (NMA-TV)–to learn how the scandal will boost the ex-Governator's film career.
UPDATE, MAY 18, 9:14 A.M.: Yesterday, amid media reports that a Brea mom who used to work for Arnold Schwarzenegger may have bore his love child, TV news vans were parked outside her home on a quiet street.
Through her attorney, Tammy Tousignant vehemently denies the ex-Governator is the father of Orange Coast College student Tanner Tousignant.
Today, amid media reports that a Bakersfield mom who used to work for the ex-Governator admitted to bearing his love child, the TV news vans have moved to her quiet cul-de-sac.
According to various reports, Schwarzenegger/Shriver family housekeeper and assistant of more than 20 years Mildred “Patty” Baena had a son with the man of the house 14 years ago and was fired four weeks ago as the Terminator tried unsuccessfully to repair his union with Maria Shriver. When Baena threatened to go public with the news of her child, Schwarzenegger made his public admission.
As for Tousignant, her lawyer Thomas E. Anthony says, “All scientific tests confirmed that Mr. [Tom] Tousignant was
the biological father of the child.”
Anthony added that his client “had nothing but the highest regards for Maria and Arnold as a couple.”
RadarOnline has the scoop.
ORIGINAL POST, MAY 17, 3:46 P.M.: Gawker, the gossipy New York-based pop-culture site, today offered the possibility that Tanner Tousignant of Brea (pictured) is Arnold Schwarzenegger's son.
The apparent OC connection–albeit one Tousignant has specifically denied–is based on a 2003 story in the (also very gossipy) London Daily Mail that was picked up in the U.S. by other quite-gossipy outlets such as the New York Daily News, the National Enquirer and the Drudge Report.
And the Daily Mail reporter who broke the love-child story in '03 says she understands today's original Los Angeles Times bombshell was not based on the birth of Tousignant, but a second kid out of wedlock. It's enough to make one's oversized Austrian melon explode!
Tammy Tousignant, the 19-year-old Orange Coast College student's
mother, was once a stewardess on Schwarzenegger's private jet. The Daily
Mail story from 2003 paraphrases Tousignant as saying she “worked with
the star for 11 years,” but that she denied any impropriety. That story also quotes an unnamed former colleague of Tousignant as saying that Maria Shriver personally got Tousignant fired in the late 1990s.
According to the Gawker post, Tanner
Tousignant graduated last year from Brea Olinda High School, where he played football and baseball. Via Facebook, he reportedly denied to Gawker that he is Schwarzenegger's son. Gawker quotes him as responding: “im not his son…. don't waist your time. it was just a stupid story made up 8 years ago.”
So, are this mother and son from the never-confirmed-and-in-fact-vociferously denied gossip-rag pieces the same people as the confirmed-yet-unnamed mother and child from this morning's Los Angeles Times story? The paper did not name the mistress nor her child, but they did interview the woman, who first denied having had an affair and child with Schwarzenegger. When the Schwarzeneggers themselves confirmed the rumors and the Times went back to the unnamed woman, she refused further comment.
Throw into the convoluted mess a Gawker update:
I just heard from Wendy Leigh, the Schwarzenegger biographer and Daily Mail reporter who broke the love-child story in 2003, and she believes that today's revelations might be about a second
love-child. “I'm hearing that this is a different child,” she says.
“Which means there are two.” Leigh stands by her 2003 account
Schwarzenegger being the father of Tanner Tousignant, but if what she's
hearing today pans out, then Schwarzenegger's statement today wasn't
about Tanner. So while he's still a Schwarzenegger love-child, he's not
the latest Schwarzenegger love-child.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.