“I’m not a church boy”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to allegations that he sexually assaulted a family babysitter at home by dismissing the incident, claiming he was not a “church boy” and had a “very wild youth.”

In a comprehensive report by Vanity FairThe former employee accused the independent presidential candidate of groping her in 1998.

Eliza Cooney, who was hired as a part-time baby nurse in the fall of that year, was 23 at the time of the alleged incident. She moved into the Kennedys’ home in Mount Kisco, New York, to care for the children and assist RFK Jr., who was married to Mary Richardson at the time, in his environmental law clinic at Pace University.

Cooney claimed that Kennedy, then 45, touched her leg during a business meeting and a week later showed up in her bedroom shirtless and asked her to rub lotion on his back. The woman further alleged that months later, while she was searching the kitchen pantry, Kennedy approached her from behind and grabbed her hips, chest and breasts.

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

In conversation with Saagar Enjeti on Break points Podcast that called presidential candidate Vanity Fairs article was “a load of garbage” and began to defend himself. “Listen, I’ve said this from the beginning. I’m not a church boy. That’s not how I run. I had a very, very wild youth,” Kennedy said, adding, “I said in my inaugural address that I have so many skeletons in the closet that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.”

“You know, Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories. And I’m not going to, you know, comment on the specifics of it, but I am who I am,” he added.

When asked whether or not he denied the “nanny situation,” Kennedy replied, “I’m not going to comment on that.”

The story published by Vanity Fair It also lists allegations related to images sent to friends, including the claim that Kennedy texted photos of naked women to friends during his marriage to Richardson. Although his friends believed he took the photos himself, they were unsure whether the women “would have consented to having their genitals photographed, let alone shared with other people.”

According to the article, RFK Jr. sent a friend traveling to Asia a message that included a photo of him and an unidentified woman pretending to eat “the grilled remains of what looks like a dog.” Kennedy allegedly told his friend that he might like a restaurant in Korea that serves dog meat. The photo was taken in 2010, according to the digital file’s metadata, the same year Kennedy began suffering from memory loss and impaired cognitive abilities 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 during a whitewater rafting trip on the Futaleufu River in Patagonia many years ago.”

The revelations in Vanity FairThe article comes at a critical time for Kennedy’s presidential campaign as he tries to gain support for his independent presidential candidacy. Kennedy’s family, close friends and former colleagues have urged him to drop out of the 2024 presidential race, warning that his disruptive campaign could take crucial votes away from President Joe Biden and potentially hand the White House to Donald Trump.