Early Life
Michael Skakel was one of seven children born to Rushton Walter Skakel (1923-2003) and Anne Reynolds (1932-1973). The family lived in the neighborhood of Belle Haven in Greenwich, Connecticut. After his mother's death from brain cancer in 1973, Skakel began abusing alcohol and had difficulties at school. His cousin Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. later wrote that Skakel was a "small sensitive child — the runt of the litter with a harsh and occasionally violent alcoholic father who both ignored and abused him." He also struggled for years with dyslexia, which went undiagnosed until he was 26.
In 1978, Skakel was arrested for drunk driving in New York. To avoid criminal charges, Skakel's family sent him to the Elan School in Poland Spring, Maine, where he received treatment for alcoholism. He left the school after two years and spent much of the 1980s competing on the national speed skiing circuit. In 1993, he graduated from Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, and worked as a driver for Ted Kennedy's 1994 reelection campaign. Later that year he took a job working for his cousin Michael Kennedy at the Citizens Energy Corporation as director of international programs.
Read more about this topic: Martha Moxley
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