Towards the end of her marriage to Andrew Cuomo, Kerry Kennedy was sleeping in a locked bathroom to protect herself, according to a biographer who scrutinized Gov. Cuomo’s life.
Bullying abuse helped end the marriage between Cuomo, now 63, and Kennedy, the seventh child of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy, author Michael Shnayerson said. They were married from 1990 to 2005 and have three daughters.
The allegations fit a pattern of brutal bullying and degrading treatment of women raised in recent weeks, prompting Cuomo to step down, and possible impeachment if he doesn’t.
Shnayerson wrote that Kennedy wanted to divorce by 2001, around the time Cuomo’s role as Secretary for Housing and Urban Development under President Bill Clinton was winding down.
“Her problems with her husband were strictly personal,” Shnayerson wrote in Vanity Fair. Some of her complaints were about not doing things like attending their daughters’ schools and reading a book on parenting, but there were tougher allegations as well.
“Kerry was done with being ridiculed and belittled,” Shnayerson told a source close to the pair. “Andrew would work on the marriage or he wouldn’t, and the two would get divorced.”
Cuomo made an unsuccessful bid for the governor in 2002, but got no further than the state convention. Kennedy demanded a divorce as soon as he dropped out of the race.
Shnayerson wrote that Cuomo refused to leave their home or respond to her attorneys for six months.
During that period, Kerry slept more than one night in a locked bathroom, according to a source close to the family who reported cases of physical violence. “I’ve been a human rights activist, and for women who abuse their husbands,” Kerry told a friend, “and this is where I suffer this abuse,” Schnayerson recalled.
The bullying continued in various ways, such as making it difficult to plan vacations for their daughters, he wrote, quoting a source who said, “There are millions of ways that a single parent can make the other parent’s life miserable. and he played that game. “
Kennedy could not be immediately reached by The Post for comment.
A spokesman for the governor told Vanity Fair: “The divorce was over 15 years ago and was tabloid for weeks with all kinds of untrue rumors. Time has proven that they are all false. Andrew is a great dad, and his daughters will be the first to say that Kerry and Andrew have been great co-parents – and time showed that those who spread the rumors were actually the problem. “