How a lobotomy ruined JFK’s sister’s life and brought shame to the family

Rosemary was considered a problem child. Her parents’ attempts to “fix” her ultimately led to a tragic outcome.

Rosemary was the third child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy and at first appeared to be a perfectly healthy child. However, as the girl grew older, it became apparent that she developed differently from her siblings. Rosemary had slurred speech and was prone to tantrums and aggressive behavior, which worried her parents.

It was assumed that the girl suffered a birth injury. The advice of an inexperienced nurse, who was next to Rose Kennedy, led to oxygen starvation in the child, and the doctor was delayed, and there was no one to point out mistakes.

At first, the girl’s parents tried to cure her and tried various methods. She attended a special school for children with developmental delays, but her behavior remained problematic and she was frequently expelled. The Kennedy family also sought help from various doctors and specialists, but their advice was often contradictory and ineffective.

Rosemary’s condition worsened and her father, Joseph Kennedy, became increasingly overcome with a sense of disappointment. This led to the fateful decision to perform a lobotomy on her, a procedure that would change her life forever.

The lobotomy was performed in 1941, when Rosemary was just 23 years old, by Dr. Walter Freeman, one of the most famous lobotomists in the United States at the time.

The idea of ​​the currently banned procedure was to “cure” a person’s problematic behavior by severing the connections between brain regions.

The lobotomy performed on Rosemary Kennedy left her permanently disabled: she could neither walk nor speak normally, and her cognitive abilities were severely impaired.

Initially, Rosemary was in a psychiatric hospital, then she was transferred to Jefferson, Wisconsin, where she lived the rest of her life on the territory of St. Coletta Institution for the Disabled. She was completely isolated from the outside world and cut off from her family. Only his father, Joseph Kennedy, visited him occasionally.

Rosemary’s condition has been kept a secret from the public. The Kennedy family did not publicly acknowledge her lobotomy for several decades, fearing it would damage their reputation and viewing Rosemary as a disgrace to the family, as mental illness was then heavily stigmatized in society.

Joseph had a career in politics and had high hopes for his sons, dreaming that one of them would become the country’s president, and information about a parent with mental problems could become a stain on the image of a wealthy and prosperous family.

In the family, Rosemary quickly became a taboo subject as well – none of her siblings even knew where she was. While her older brother John was campaigning for re-election to the Senate in 1958, the Kennedy family attributed his absence from public view to his recluse.

After her father’s death in 1969, Rosemary resumed spending time with her family from time to time. The decision to return his family was made by his sister Eunice, who then dedicated her life to fighting for the rights of special people. Rosemary was taken to relatives in Florida and Washington, as well as to her childhood home on Cape Cod. By then she had learned to walk again, but she was limping. She could never speak clearly and her arm was paralyzed.

Rosemary died of natural causes at the age of 86 in 2005. She was buried next to her parents in Holiness Cemetery in Brooklyn, Massachusetts.