FILE - In this 2005 photo provided by Peter Michaelis, Mary Richardson Kennedy poses for a photo outside her Bedford, N.Y. home. In a confidential affidavit filed in connection to his divorce proceedings, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his estranged wife Mary Kennedy was abusive toward his children from an earlier marriage and asked the court to prohibit her from threatening suicide in front of their kids. Portions of the affidavit were posted online Sunday, June 10, 2012 at The Daily Beast site, to go along with a cover story in Newsweek magazine about her. (AP Photo/Peter T. Michaelis, file)
June 11, 2012 - 8:09 PM
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s accusations about his estranged wife's behaviour before her suicide amounted to "a brutal psychological weapon," her family says.
Mary Richardson Kennedy's relatives issued a statement saying an affidavit in the Kennedys' divorce case, disclosed Sunday, was "scurrilous" and "full of vindictive lies."
In the affidavit, dated September 2011, Robert Kennedy accused Mary Kennedy of abusing his children from an earlier marriage and stealing from them and him.
It asked a judge for an order of protection to keep her from physically attacking him, showing up uninvited at his homes and denigrating him to their children.
Kennedy, son of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, also asked that his wife be required to remain sober in front of their children and not threaten suicide in their presence.
Mary Kennedy hanged herself last month at the family's estate in Bedford. The divorce was pending. One of Mary Kennedy's brothers tried to get custody of her body before she was buried near the Kennedy compound in Massachusetts.
The Richardson family's statement said the affidavit, posted online by The Daily Beast as part of a Newsweek magazine article, "was written by Bobby Kennedy as part of a contentious custody battle and was nothing more than a brutal psychological weapon in the divorce case."
It said the release of the document was proof of the "emotional and psychological abuse that Mary endured during the last years of her life, and also in death."
"We hoped Mary could rest in peace," it said.
Messages left at Kennedy's office at a legal environmental clinic and his divorce lawyer's Manhattan office weren't immediately returned.
News from © The Associated Press, 2012