Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to an accusation that he sexually assaulted a family babysitter at his home by brushing off the incident, asserting that he is not a “church boy” and had a “very rambunctious youth.”
In a wide-ranging report by Vanity Fair, the former employee accused the independent presidential candidate of groping her in 1998.
Eliza Cooney, who was hired in the fall that year as their part-time babysister, was 23-year-old at the time of the alleged incident. She moved into the Kennedy’s home in Mount Kisco, New York, to take care of their children and assist RFK Jr., who was married to Mary Richardson at the time, at his environmental law clinic at Pace University.
Cooney alleged that Kennedy, then 45, touched her leg during a business meting, and a week later, appeared shirtless in her bedroom and asked her to rub lotion on his back. The woman further alleged that months later, as she was looking through the kitchen pantry, Kennedy came up behind her and groped her hips, rib cage, and breasts.
The assault was interrupted, said Cooney, when a male worker walked into the kitchen.
When speaking to Saagar Enjeti on the Breaking Points podcast, the presidential candidate called Vanity Fair‘s article “a lot of garbage” and proceeded to defend himself. “Listen, I’ve said this from the beginning. I’m not a church boy. I am not running like that. I had a very, very rambunctious youth,” said Kennedy, adding, “I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”
“So, you know, Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories. And, I’m not, you know, going to comment on the details of any of them, but it’s, you know, I am who I am,” he added.
When asked if he denied the “nanny situation” or not, Kennedy replied, “I’m not going to comment on it.”
The story published by Vanity Fair also details allegations involving images sent to friends including the claim that during his marriage to Richardson, Kennedy would text friends photos of nude women; although his friends assumed he had taken the photos himself, they were unsure if the women had “consented to having their genitalia photographed, let alone shared with other people.”
According to the article, RFK Jr. sent a message to a friend traveling to Asia that included a photo of himself and an unidentified woman pretending to eat “the barbecued remains of what appears to be a dog.” Kennedy allegedly told his friend that he might enjoy a restaurant in Korea that served dog. The photo was taken in 2010, per the digital file’s metadata, the same year Kennedy experienced memory fog and impaired cognitive ability from what doctors believed was a parasitic brain worm in his brain. When Enjeti asked about the photo, Kennedy claimed it was “actually me eating a goat in Patagonia on a whitewater trip many years ago on the Futaleufu River.”
The revelations made in Vanity Fair‘s article arrive at critical time for Kennedy’s presidential campaign as he tries to drum up support for his independent presidential bid. Kennedy’s family, close friends, and former colleagues have urged him to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, warning that his spoiler campaign could take away crucial votes from President Joe Biden and potentially hand over the White House to Donald Trump.