Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he is “not going to comment” about sexual assault allegations made by a former babysitter who was hired to assist his family in 1998, but did admit he has “many skeletons in his closet.”
In a Vanity Fair article published on Tuesday, July 2, Eliza Cooney claims the independent candidate for president, 70, made inappropriate advances towards her 26 years ago when she was employed by him.
Kennedy was asked about allegations on the YouTube political show Breaking PointsTuesday afternoon.
“The article is a lot of garbage,” Kennedy said. “In terms of the other allegations, I have said this from the beginning: I am not a church boy. I am not running like that. I had a very, very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote I could run for king of the world.”
“Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories and I’m not going to comment on the details of any of them but I am who I am,” he added.
“You’re talking here about the nanny situation,” host Saagar Enjenit confirmed. “I do have to ask sir, are you denying it or not?”
“I’m not going to comment on it,” Kennedy replied.
According to the article, a then 23-year-old Cooney was hired as the Kennedys’ part-time babysitter in the fall of 1998.
At this time, Kennedy, the nephew of late President John F. Kennedy and son of late U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was married to Mary Richardson Kennedy.
The former couple, who married in 1994 and later divorced in 2012, had four children together — Conor, Kyra, Aidan and Finn.
Cooney was a recent college graduate who moved into Kennedy and Mary’s Mount Kisco, New York home to babysit and help Kennedy at his environmental law clinic at Pace University during the week, Vanity Fairsaid.
Cooney allegedly kept a diary, where she would document instances of Kennedy’s unwanted sexual advances. One incident described in the article reportedly took place on the evening of Nov. 7, 1998, in the Kennedy family kitchen.
“From everything everybody says about the Kennedys + their Babysitters, they had me worried. Like I have to watch out, be careful. And the other night in the kitchen w/ Murray I could have sworn he was touching my leg + hand,” an excerpt read.
“It seemed like he thought I was somebody else or wasn’t paying attention. Like he would come to every once in a while and snap out of it or I would move away. It was like he was on something or really tired or was missing Mary or was testing me.”
Now 48, Cooney also told Vanity Fair that on another occasion she found a shirtless Kennedy in her bedroom asking her to put lotion on his back. According to the former employee, the politician was in his mid-40s at the time.
“I thought, isn’t Mary home? Doesn’t she do this for you?” she recalled in Tuesday’s article, adding, “It was totally inappropriate.”
Cooney also opened up about an alleged incident months later in which she was grabbing a snack from the pantry after a yoga class. While she was still wearing a sports bra and leggings, Kennedy allegedly “blocked her inside the room, and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts,” the article said.
“My back was to the door of the pantry, and he came up behind me,” Cooney claimed. “I was frozen. Shocked.”
Following the height of the #MeToo movement, Cooney told her mother about the alleged sexual abuse from Robert, but decided against going public until he recently announced his candidacy for president.
