It was nearly eleven in the evening on March 30, 1991 when Senator Ted Kennedy, his son Patrick, 23, and nephew William Kennedy Smith, 30, left the Kennedy family’s Palm Beach, Florida ocean front holiday retreat to go out for drinks at a popular bistro known as Ann’z. Even though it was late, things were just getting moving in the city and the Kennedys wanted to be a part of the fun. After a brief stop at the bistro, Ted, Patrick and William went to another nightspot named Au Bar, “where trust fund idlers, obscure blue bloods, bejeweled society matrons and erstwhile celebs like Roxanne Pulitzer” went to rub elbows, Michelle Green reported in an April 22, 1991 People Weekly article.
While at the bar, Patrick met a 27-year-old Testa’s Restaurant waitress, Michelle Cassone, with whom he danced and shared drinks. William also met a woman named Patricia Bowman, a 29-year-old single mother out with her girlfriend, Anne Weatherly Mercer. Later that evening when the bars closed, the two couples went back to the Kennedy family retreat for the remainder of the evening.
Michelle and Patrick drank wine and talked in the living room. According to Green, at one point Ted Kennedy walked into the room “without his trousers” and sporting only a long-tailed shirt, something that made Michelle Cassone feel extremely uncomfortable. She was quoted in the article saying that they went to sit outside on the sea wall, where the three talked about the ocean and “the importance of the family.”
In a different location at the Kennedy compound, Patricia Bowman and William Kennedy Smith were talking as they strolled along the beach. In a December 1991 People Weekly article, Linda Mark quoted Patricia as saying that William “suddenly took off his clothes and jumped in the ocean.” Feeling uneasy, Patricia turned around and started back towards the house. It was then, Mark suggested, that William allegedly tackled Patricia, threw her to the ground and, despite her cries of protest, raped her. Soon after, Patricia went back to the house and called Anne Mercer, who picked her up at the Kennedys’ residence. She was taken to the Palm Beach Police Station where she made a rape report and was then taken to Humana Hospital, located nearby, where she was treated for injuries and subjected to forensic testing. A police official stated that he was, “99 percent sure” that Patricia was the victim of a sex crime, Green reported.
Michelle, Patrick and Ted, who were also at the estate, allegedly had no knowledge that any crime occurred that evening. The following Monday, news of the alleged rape spread quickly. In fact, at the time it became one of the most highly publicized rape cases in United States history.
By many accounts, the police investigation into the rape was botched from the start. Green stated that it took two days from the time of the purported crime for a police report to be filed, in which no suspect’s name was ever mentioned. Moreover, Margaret Carlson said in an April 1991 Time article that “by the end of the week, police still had not questioned any Kennedys. Nor did they interrogate bartenders, parking-lot attendants or other potential witnesses until a week after the alleged crime.”
To make matters worse, many reporters following the case believed that the Kennedy family wasn’t completely forthcoming with information concerning the event. Carlson said that William “refused to give a statement” and when asked by the media about the alleged rape he flatly denied it ever occurred. Furthermore, Carlson claimed that Ted failed to return phone calls made by investigators.
In the meantime, Patricia tried to keep her identity hidden from the press. The last thing she wanted was reporters knocking on the door at all hours, especially when her small child was around. Unfortunately, Patricia was unable to keep her identity secret for long in the ongoing media frenzy.
In an April 1992 Stanford University News Service article, Patricia said that “within 48 hours of the assault” she was “under siege” by the media. She further stated that, “news people were in her street, in her yard, on her property, day and night, making her and her daughter’s life unbearable.” Even though her name was publicly released, she was still able to keep the rest of her identity hidden, at least until she was ready to reveal it herself.
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In mid May 1991, over a thousand pages of official documents concerning the case, including the depositions of Ted, William and Patrick were publicly released. Carlson reported in a May 1991 Time article that the documents showed, “that the senator initially stonewalled the police and that neither he nor his son Patrick…was truthful.” Carlson also claimed that a visiting guest of the senator, former FBI agent William Barry, lied to investigators who came to the house when he told them that neither William nor Ted were at the residence when they actually were. Moreover, she mentioned in the article that when the police phoned an hour later, a housekeeper “told them Barry had taken the senator and Smith to the airport” even though Kennedy didn’t leave until the next day. Even more surprisingly, Cathy Booth claimed in a December 1991 Time article that “for two weeks the family rebuffed police attempts to survey the grounds where the alleged assault took place.” Many began to wonder if the Kennedys were deliberately trying to hide something.
Following his arrest and subsequent release on bail, William Kennedy Smith made no attempt to shy away from the media. A December 30, 1991 People Weekly article reported that prior to the upcoming trial scheduled for later that year, William “posed for photo ops romping with his new Labrador retriever and speaking to school children.” In fact, William seemed unscathed by the accusations, even though the Duke University graduate did miss his Georgetown University Medical School exams shortly after the scandal broke and the vast majority of his inheritance from his father, the late Stephen Smith, was used to pay his mounting legal fees. It is likely that William believed he had little to lose. After all, he was a Kennedy and he had some of the country’s movers and shakers on his side.
By late summer, the prosecution brought forth three more women who claimed that William assaulted them. One woman claimed that in 1983 while at a New York City party she met William, a cousin of her boyfriend. Nancy Gibbs stated in her August 1991 Time article that the woman accepted William’s offer to sleep at his guesthouse after she had drunk too much at the party and while there, he assaulted her. According to the article, the woman claimed that, “one moment he was standing in front of me, talking with me, saying good night to me… and the next minute he had tackled me onto the bed and was trying to kiss me and had his body completely over mine… and he wouldn’t stop.” However, she never filed a report with the police after the incident because there were no witnesses and she thought she wouldn’t be believed.
A 26-year-old New Jersey medical student also came forward claiming that in May 1988, William raped her at his home after a party in Washington, D. C. The woman didn’t tell the authorities what happened because she was afraid of the unwanted publicity since William was a Kennedy. Moreover, she worried that no one would believe her story.
A third woman, a doctor, also came forth and agreed to testify at the upcoming trial, claiming that William attempted to rape her at his Palm Beach, Florida apartment in 1988. Yet, he allegedly let her go after she repeatedly protested. She too failed to alert the authorities as to what happened that night, fearing that she would not be believed. The Kennedy family was just too intimidating to confront.
The prosecution team led by attorneys Moira Lasch and David Bludworth wanted to introduce the three women’s testimonies at trial, hoping to prove that William had a history of sexual assault. There was no doubt that their testimony would significantly damage his credibility. Realizing the potential harm to their case, the defense team led by attorneys Roy Black and Mark Schnapp filed a motion to prevent the women’s testimonies from being heard in court.
Florida law prohibited a defendant’s sexual history from being introduced during a trial if two requirements weren’t met by the state. According to the defense motion, case no. 91-5482-CF-A-02, the State of Florida v. William Kennedy Smith, the prosecution had to demonstrate that the evidence they were offering was “relevant to prove a material fact in issue” and that the cases were “strikingly similar to the charged offense.” Immediately prior to the trial, the defense team, “argued that the three cases did not represent a ‘signature style’ and that the only real question in the Palm Beach case was whether the women consented or not,” Booth reported. If this could be proved, the prosecution wouldn’t stand a chance.
On December 2, 1991, eight months after the alleged crime, the four women and two men on the jury heard their first day of testimony. The case, which was nationally televised, “riveted millions of viewers from coast to coast and attracted reporters from around the world,” Mary Jordan reported in a December 1991 Washington Post article. That first day, Judge Mary E. Lupo struck a blow to the prosecution team by disallowing them from entering the testimonies of the three women who claimed that William assaulted them. The judge ruled that the cases were just too dissimilar. The decision significantly weakened the state’s case.
As the trial progressed, the prosecution presented Patricia as a “doting mother and caring daughter” who divided her time between volunteering support to parents with premature babies at the hospital and looking after her daughter, Mark reported. However, Lasch suggested to the jury that Patricia’s life was suddenly turned upside down after William forcefully raped her at the Kennedy’s family retreat. Over the course of two days, millions watched Patricia’s harrowing testimony concerning the events of that fateful Easter weekend in 1991.
Patricia provided detailed accounts of the night she claimed she was raped, telling jurors how she initially trusted William and found him even “likable.” Yet, she claimed that the first hint that something was wrong was when William took off his clothes and jumped into the ocean. She testified that when she turned to leave, William brutally attacked her. Patricia said that she yelled, “No!” and “Stop,” while trying to fight him off of her, yet he ignored her pleas pushed up her dress and raped her anyways, Mark reported.
When she was taken to the hospital after the incident, few doubted that Patricia had been forcefully attacked. After all, the “bruises on her torso were consistent with the attack she described,” Booth stated in her article. Moreover, Patricia “passed two polygraph tests and a voice-stress analysis.” The “police, prosecutors, rape counselors and the doctors who examined Patricia all believed her story,” Booth further claimed. The evidence, as far as the prosecution was concerned, was irrefutable. The defense disagreed.
After Patricia’s heart wrenching and powerful testimony, the defense presented its case. They believed Patricia to have quite a different character from what the state asserted. According to Mark, the defense suggested that she was a party girl and “ne’er-do-well without a paying job, who dated a bartender and wasted her trust fund on $60-a-bottle Veuve Clicquot champagne.” They presented witnesses to support their argument. They further claimed that on the night of the alleged rape, William and Patricia did have intercourse but that it was consensual sex.
William eventually took the stand and, like Patricia, gave convincing testimony. Mark reported in her article that William testified that Patricia acted strange on the night in question, calling him another name and repeatedly asking for his ID card. Mark further said that during William’s testimony he claimed that following “consensual” sex with Patricia, she started to “shake and cry,” stating that she had been raped. By the end of William’s testimony it was apparent that the defense team’s strategy was to convince the court that the real victim was not Patricia but actually the defendant. Despite all of the evidence, the tactics proved successful.
On December 23, 1991, the jury deliberated for less than 80 minutes before returning their verdict. William was found “not guilty” of all charges. In response to the judgment, William jumped out of his chair and hugged his lawyer. When he walked out of the courthouse, hundreds of people chanted his name and clapped in support, Jordan reported. However, there were few there to support Patricia who had risked all to confront the Kennedy clan.
Days after the trial ended, Patricia, whose face was electronically obscured throughout the trial to protect her identity, shed her anonymity during an interview on ABC’s “Prime Time Live” with Diane Sawyer. Richard Zoglin reported in a December 1991 Time article that she decided to “come forward so that other rape victims would not be scared off by her experiences.” Even though it took more than a decade, other alleged rape victims slowly emerged, naming William Kennedy Smith as their alleged attacker.
Over the years, William attracted little media attention, except for his arrest in a bar brawl in October 1993 and rumors that he planned to run for Congress in 2001, which never panned out. A vast majority of the public didn’t realized that William had become a medical doctor and during the mid to late 1990’s founded and managed two Chicago-based organizations known as Physicians Against Land Mines (PALM) and Center for International Rehabilitation (CIR). In fact, it was only brought to the public’s attention in August 2004, when several women with whom William worked filed complaints of sexual harassment against him with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). It is a mounting scandal that could reach epic proportions.
According to court documents filed in Cook County Circuit Court, Audra Soulias, William’s personal assistant at CIR, claimed that in January 1999 she went out to eat on her birthday with two co-workers and one of their boyfriends. During their dinner, William, her boss, showed up unexpectedly. Soulias said that William bought rounds of drinks for everyone at the table and then joined them, without being invited, at a local bar to continue the birthday celebration.
At approximately 2 a.m., Soulias alleged that when she caught a cab to go home, William jumped in and instructed the driver to go to his home. She further alleged that he physically grabbed her out of the cab, pulled her into his house and, despite her cries and pleas to stop, sexually assaulted her with his fingers. Soulias claimed that when she tried to leave, William grabbed her forcefully and pulled her onto the bed, although she was eventually able to shake lose and escape from him and the house.
Soulias said that she told her co-workers about the alleged rape and even played for them a voicemail message left by William the following morning, in which he apologized for his behavior and claimed that he had “a problem.” However, on the advice of her friends, Soulias didn’t report the incident to the police because she was intimidated by his power, position and wealth, Megan Reichgott suggested in a August 26, 2004 AP Online article. Interestingly, Soulias did admit that several months after the incident she had a brief relationship with William, a fact that may hinder her if the case were to go to trial.
Reichgott quoted Soulias’ attorney, Kevin O’Reilly, stating that she “ultimately decided to file the civil lawsuit because she wanted to stop an alleged pattern of harassment.” One of her co-workers who had gone out with her for dinner on the night of the alleged attack also filed a complaint on two separate occasions with the EEOC in 2003 for sexual harassment and “unwanted sexual advances” allegedly made by William. That same year, another employee at CIR also filed charges with the EEOC alleging that William sexually harassed her during her employment.
William made a statement to the press stating that the accusations against him were “outrageous, untrue and without merit,” Reichgott reported. According to an August 31, 2004 CNN.com article, William claimed that the sexual encounters they had were, “in no way forced or coerced” but strictly consensual. The article further quoted William’s attorney, Dan Webb, who said that a day before the lawsuit was filed, Soulias’ attorney demanded $3.3 million in restitution and threatened lawsuit if the money wasn’t immediately received.
The amount of money Webb claimed was demanded by Soulias’ lawyers was a far cry from what she was asking for in the suit, which was $50,000 in damages. O’Reilly said that the suit was not about the money but about putting a stop to William’s behavior, Reichgott reported. Soulias was quoted in an August 27, 2004 Associated Press article saying that she was “putting William Kennedy Smith on notice. You will not victimize another woman and be able to keep it silent if I can help it!”
Realizing that he had a long battle ahead of him and wanting to protect the organization he founded, William resigned from his position at CIR shortly after the allegations became public, CNN.com reported. A trial date has not yet been set. One thing is for sure, William won’t be able to escape the media’s attention as he managed to do over the last decade.
Associated Press (August 27, 2004). “William Kennedy Smith accused of rape.”
Audra Soulias v. William Kennedy Smith. In The Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois County Department-Law Division. Complaint at Law. Filed August 25, 2004.
Booth, Cathy (December 23, 1991). “The case that was not heard.” Time Magazine.
Carlson, Margaret (April 15, 1991). “The Kennedy boys’ night out: an evening of carousing, an accusation of rape and talk of a botched investigation roil the wealthy’s favorite playground.” Time Magazine.
Carlson, Margaret (May 27, 1991). “When in doubt, obfuscate: Ted Kennedy’s handling of the Palm Beach rape case echoes an old pattern of recklessness, evasion and irresponsibility.” Time Magazine.
CNN.com (August 31, 2004). “Kennedy cousin quits job to fight allegations.”
Gibbs, Nancy (August 5, 1991). “Then there were three: the prosecution raises the ante by unveiling a trio of new accusers who say William Kennedy Smith assaulted them.” Time Magazine.
Green, Michelle (April 22, 1991). “Boy’s night out in Palm Beach: for Ted Kennedy, a son and nephew. An evening of aimless carousing ends in an accuation of rape.” People Weekly.
Jordan, Mary (December 12, 1991). “Jury finds Smith not guilty.” The Washington Post.
Mark, Linda (December 23, 1991). “The most famous woman never seen.” People Weekly.
People Weekly (December 30, 1991). “William Smith: a Kennedy cousin wins acquittal in a televised rape trial that was, inevitably about much more than rape.”
Reichgott, Megan (August 26, 2004). “William Kennedy Smith accused of assault.” AP Online.
Stanford University News Services (April 15, 1992). “Bowman lambastes media for invading her privacy.”
Zoglin, Richard (December 30, 1991). “Was she right to go right?” Time Magazine.