Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is facing renewed blowback for allegedly sexually assaulting a former family babysitter after he reportedly decided to shoot her a late-night apology text.
The former babysitter, Eliza Cooney, accused Kennedy in a bombshell Vanity Fair piece of rubbing her leg, reading her diary, asking her to rub lotion on his back, and trapping her in the pantry and groping her, all on separate occasions in 1998, when she was 23 and Kennedy was 45.
Kennedy apparently thought the best way to smooth things over was via text. “I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings,” Kennedy wrote in a text message to Cooney, sent just after midnight on July 4 and obtained by The Washington Post.
“I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.”
The presidential candidate then proceeded to invite Cooney to continue the conversation either by telephone or “preferably, face to face.
“I recognize that this might not be possible. I have no agenda for sending this text other than making the most sincere and ernest [sic] amends,” Kennedy added.
The message was not well received—as unsolicited, late-night texts from men usually are.
“It was disingenuous and arrogant,” Cooney told the Post in reference to the message. “I’m not sure how somebody has a true apology for something that they don’t admit to recalling. I did not get a sense of remorse.”
And she was further surprised by the invitation to continue the conversation with her alleged abuser in person.
“Meet ‘face to face’? What woman wants to do that?” Cooney added.
Kennedy initially brushed off the accusations in an interview on Breaking Points, chalking up the sexual harassment claims to his “very, very rambunctious youth.”
“In terms of the other allegations, listen, I have said this from the beginning: I am not a church boy. I am not running like that,” Kennedy said. “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.”
He also derided the rest of the Vanity Fair exposé, which included a photo of Kennedy posing next to what veterinarians identified as a barbecued dog, calling the article “a lot of garbage.”
