According to Kennedy's sister
Eunice, when Rosemary returned to the United States from the United Kingdom in 1940, she became "increasingly irritable and difficult" at the age of 22. and fly into violent rages, during which she would hit and injure others. The nuns at the convent thought that Rosemary might be involved with sexual partners and that she could contract a
sexually transmitted disease Her occasionally erratic behavior frustrated her parents; her father was especially worried that Kennedy's behavior would shame and embarrass the family and damage
his and his children's political careers. When Kennedy was 23 years old, doctors told her father that a
lobotomy would help calm her mood swings and stop her occasional violent outbursts. Joe Sr. decided that Rosemary should have a lobotomy; however, he did not inform his wife of this decision until after the procedure was completed. The procedure took place in November 1941. In
Ronald Kessler's 1996 biography of Joe Sr.,
Sins of the Father,
James W. Watts, who carried out the procedure with
Walter Freeman (both of
George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences), is quoted in the following passage: Watts told Kessler that in his opinion, Kennedy did not have "mental retardation" but rather a form of
depression. A review of all of the papers written by the two doctors confirmed Watts' declaration. All of the patients the two doctors lobotomized were diagnosed as having some form of mental disorder.
Bertram S. Brown, director of the
National Institute of Mental Health who was previously an aide to President Kennedy, told Kessler that Joe Kennedy referred to his daughter Rosemary as
mentally retarded rather than
mentally ill in order to protect John's reputation for a presidential run and that the family's "lack of support for mental illness is part of a lifelong family denial of what was really so". It quickly became apparent that the procedure had caused catastrophic damage. Kennedy's mental capacity diminished to that of a two-year-old child. She could not walk or speak intelligibly and was
incontinent.
Aftermath After the lobotomy, Kennedy was almost immediately institutionalized. She initially lived for several years at Craig House, a private psychiatric hospital around 90 minutes north of New York City. In 1949, she was relocated to
Jefferson, Wisconsin, where she lived for the rest of her life on the grounds of the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children (formerly known as "St. Coletta Institute for Backward Youth"). Archbishop
Richard Cushing of Boston had told her father about St. Coletta's, an institution for more than 300 people with disabilities, and her father traveled to and built a private house for her about a mile outside St. Coletta's main campus near Alverno House, which was designed for adults who needed lifelong care. The nuns called the house "the Kennedy cottage". Two Catholic nuns, Sister Margaret Ann and Sister Leona, provided her care along with a student and a woman who worked on ceramics with Kennedy three nights a week. Kennedy had a car that could be used to take her for rides and a dog which she could take on walks. In
Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, author
Kate Clifford Larson stated that Kennedy's lobotomy was hidden from the family for 20 years; none of her siblings knew of her whereabouts. While her older brother John was campaigning for
re-election to the U.S. Senate in 1958, the Kennedy family explained away her absence by claiming she was reclusive. The family did not publicly explain her absence until 1961, after John had been elected president. The Kennedys did not reveal that she was institutionalized because of a failed lobotomy, but instead said that she was deemed "mentally retarded". In 1961, after Joe Sr. had a
stroke that left him unable to speak and walk, Rosemary's siblings were made aware of her location. ==Later life and death==