“I'm not a church kid”

Robert F. Kennedy In response to an accusation that he sexually assaulted a babysitter at his home, Jr. downplayed the incident, saying he was not a “church boy” and had a “very turbulent youth.”

In a wide-ranging report by Vanity FairThe former employee accused the independent presidential candidate of sexually assaulting her in 1998.

Eliza Cooney, who had been hired in the fall of that year as a part-time babysitter, was 23 at the time of the incident. She moved into the Kennedy home in Mount Kisco, New York, to care for their children and help RFK Jr., who was then married to Mary Richardson, in his environmental law clinic at Pace University.

Cooney claimed that Kennedy, then 45, touched her leg during a business meeting and that a week later he appeared shirtless in her bedroom and asked her to rub lotion on his back. The woman also claimed that months later, while she was rummaging in the kitchen pantry, Kennedy approached her from behind and touched her hips, ribcage and breasts.

The assault was interrupted, Cooney said, when a worker entered the kitchen.

Speaking to Saagar Enjeti on the Breaking points podcast, the presidential candidate called Vanity Fair“Kennedy's article is full of bullshit,” and he defended himself. “Look, I said it from the beginning. I'm not a church kid. I don't run that way. I had a very, very turbulent youth,” Kennedy said, adding, “I said in my announcement speech that I had so many skeletons in my closet that 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 going to comment on the specifics of any of them, but you know, I am who I am,” he added.

Asked whether or not he denied the “nanny situation,” Kennedy said, “I'm not going to comment on that.”

The story published by Vanity Fair The reporter also details allegations about images being sent to friends, including the claim that during his marriage to Richardson, Kennedy would text his friends photos of naked women; while his friends assumed he had taken the photos himself, they were unsure whether the women had “consented to having their genitals photographed, much less shared with other people.”

According to the article, RFK Jr. sent a message to a friend traveling in Asia, in which he included a photo of himself and an unidentified woman pretending to eat “the grilled remains of what appears to be a dog.” Kennedy reportedly told his friend that he might enjoy a restaurant in Korea that served dog. The photo was taken in 2010, according to metadata in the digital file, the same year Kennedy suffered memory loss and impaired cognitive abilities due to what doctors believed to be a parasitic brain worm in his brain. When Enjeti asked him about the photo, Kennedy claimed it was “actually me eating a goat in Patagonia on a whitewater rafting trip many years ago on the Futaleufu River.”

The revelations made in Vanity FairKennedy’s article comes at a critical time for his presidential campaign, as he tries to rally support for his independent bid for president. Kennedy’s family, close friends and former colleagues have urged him to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, warning that his sabotage campaign could deprive President Joe Biden of crucial votes and potentially hand the White House to Donald Trump.