NEW YORK - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused his estranged wife, Mary, of abusing his children from an earlier marriage, including stealing items from his young daughter, showing up uninvited on trips he took after they separated, and sometimes calling him dozens of times a day, according to a legal filing disclosed Sunday.
Mary Kennedy killed herself last month at the family’s estate in Bedford, N.Y. Robert Kennedy filed for divorce two years ago, and the case was pending when she died. The couple married in 1994 and had four children together.
Portions of a confidential affidavit filed in 2011 in the divorce case were posted online by The Daily Beast as part of a cover story in Newsweek magazine about Mary Kennedy that was written by Kennedy family biographer Laurence Leamer. A spokesman for the site declined to comment on how the affidavit was obtained.
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Its contents convey years of strain in the Kennedys’ relationship. Among them, Kennedy recounted instances around 1997 of taking his daughter from his first marriage, then 9, to the airport at the end of weekend visits. She would continually lose things like her wallet or plane ticket, and he chided her for it.
He said his teary-eyed daughter told him that his second wife was taking the items and when he tried to convince her otherwise, “She looked me in the eye and said, ‘No, Daddy, Mary hates me.’ ’’
He said he found the items weeks later, hidden in a drawer under his wife’s clothes.