Robert Kennedy Jr.’s late wife accused him of being a “sexual deviant,” abusing prescription drugs and “gaslighting” in newly unearthed court papers, according to a bombshell new report.
Anti-vaccine crusader Kennedy, 71, was controversially nominated by President Trump to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, and began his Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday.
“He re-jiggers the facts, or makes them up, and rushes to tell as many people as he can so that is the version of reality that gets distributed in people’s minds—classic gaslighting,” wrote Kennedy’s second wife Mary Richardson in a draft affidavit during her bitter divorce from the Kennedy scion in 2012.
The affidavit was never filed in court, according to website Mother Jones. Two months after she wrote it, Richardson took her own life. At the end of her life she had acknowledged problems with alcohol and had lost custody of their four children to RFK Jr.
Richardson also accused her estranged husband of being a “sexual deviant,” abusing prescription drugs and being a bad parent in the draft document, which she had shared with sisters Nan and Martha Richardson, according to the magazine.
Kennedy has previously admitted to being a heroin addict for 14 years.
During the protracted divorce negotiations, Kennedy also made more than 60 recordings of Richardson, which were obtained by the website.
“I want to be in a monogamous relationship,” said Kennedy on a June 4, 2011 call. “I don’t want to be in a polygamous relationship. I think that’s wrong.”
Richardson then asked, “But then why have you done it for 10 years?”
Kennedy replied, “I did it because I was being abused at home.”
A source close to Richardson said she knew “at one point” that Kennedy was taping her. “He blurted it out,” the insider told The Post Wednesday.
During their nearly 18-year marriage, Kennedy repeatedly cheated on his wife, according to secret diaries which were first revealed by The Post a year after Richardson’s death.
Richardson, the mother of four of RFK Jr.’s six children, told a source Kennedy kept a ledger in the diaries next to women’s names. He gave them a score from one to 10 depending on how far he got with each of them, the source said.
After Richardson’s death Kennedy went on to marry “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress Cheryl Hines in 2014. She was by his side Thursday during confirmation hearings.
In her draft statement, Richardson wrote that Kennedy “has been stealthily tape recording phone conversations in my home,” according to Mother Jones. She also claimed Kennedy “has left his affidavits, transcripts of surreptitiously recorded phone conversations and other documents strewn about for anyone to see.”
“I have carried the burden of Bobby and his family’s most intimate secrets since I was fifteen,” wrote Richardson, who met Kennedy when she was teenager and was best friends with his younger sister Kerry Kennedy.