Rosie O’Donnell’s surprising friendship with convicted assassin Lyle Menendez continues to be going robust.
“The View” alum solely tells Web page Six they nonetheless chat “about two or 3 times every week” as he and his brother, Erik Menendez, proceed to serve out their life sentences for murdering their mother and father in 1989.
O’Donnell first started chatting with Menendez in 2022 after watching a documentary in regards to the siblings.
Their case has come below renewed scrutiny following a Netflix documentary alleging that the brothers had been sexually abused by their father for years.
O’Donnell, 63, is hopeful that they are going to be launched quickly.
“I’m certain of it in my thoughts,” she tells us. “I’ve to be.”
She provides, “I feel it’s the one manner which you could love and care for somebody who’s serving life with out parole, is to have infinite hope and imagine of their capability to get out of this actually inhumane sentence.”
Throughout considered one of O’Donnell’s visits with Lyle, she seen many prisoners sitting with golden retriever canine.
Lyle defined that the canine had been being skilled by incarcerated males to assist kids with autism and steered that O’Donnell get a canine for her youngest youngster, Clay, who has autism.
A 12 months later, Clay, 12, who makes use of they/them pronouns, was matched with a black Labrador combine named Kuma.
The “Harriet the Spy” star says that the modifications in Clay have been nothing in need of extraordinary.
“The drawings of individuals with bloody arms and knives have all stopped,” she shares. “The laughter has come again, the brightness of their eyes, the flexibility to exit to eating places, the flexibility to remain current and never disappear into themselves, often as a result of Kuma is coming over and nudging them.”
O’Donnell was so impressed by this system, she determined to movie a brief documentary about it.
O’Donnell, like many within the autism group, is livid with Secretary of the Division of Well being and Human Providers Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s current speech the place he alleged that kids identified with autism, “won’t ever pay taxes. They’ll by no means maintain a job. They’ll by no means play baseball. They’ll by no means write a poem. They’ll by no means exit on a date.”
“I hope I by no means should see him in individual as a result of I don’t really feel I’d be capable of comprise my disgust,” she says.
“Unleashing Hope: The Energy of Service Canine for Kids with Autism” is streaming on Hulu.
