Mildred Baena on Arnold Schwarzenegger: 'I Loved Him'

Entertainment Tonight, Wednesday, June 15, 2011, 12:27pm (PDT)

More is being revealed about the nature of the relationship between Mildred Baena, the mother of Arnold Schwarzenegger's love child, with both Arnold and Maria Shriver, straight from Baena herself.

Baena's full interview with Hello! magazine has been released, and in what's being called her first and only interview on the scandal that has forced her and her family into hiding, she makes no excuses for her affair with Arnold, but also says that she "loved him" at the time.

"I'm not making excuses, but at the time I was intimate with Arnold, I loved him," she says. "But I knew he was married and had a family who I cared very much about too."

She also claims that Arnold never kept her now 13-year-old son with him a secret – rather she was.

“I never told him. I never told anyone except my mother. So much has been written about how he kept this secret of betrayal from his wife all these years – and how he kept me in the house with his family knowing Joseph was his. That is not true. Never have I told him Joseph was his son, never did he ask me, and never did we talk about it," she says.

And according to Baena, their relationship was not an ongoing love affair that lasted the 20 years she worked for the Schwarzenegger family. Rather, their indiscretions happened only a "few times."

“No, absolutely not … It was a few times, 14 years ago," she admits. "I admired and had such great respect for him. At the time, I thought I loved him … yes, I would say that. One thing led to another, we had this connection.”

In the exclusive interview, she makes note of Maria's compassion for her, even when Maria found out about the two's affair. Baena recalls that after Maria asked "point blank" if her son was Arnold's and she "broke down" and admitted it, she offered to pack up and leave right away, but Maria told her to stay until after the holidays.

"I want her to know I admire her and my apologies come from the heart," she says about Maria, who she says she has apologized to "many times." "I never intended for anyone to know, not ever. I never wanted anyone to be hurt by this.”

And through it all, she also maintains that Arnold is a good guy.

“He knows I would never say or do anything to hurt him," she says about the former governor. "He's a good man and I know he's suffering too."

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