The Secret Lobotomy Of Rosemary Kennedy

[Riddick]

Born in 1918 and the oldest daughter of Joseph Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, the life of Rose Marie Kennedy, later nicknamed Rosemary, would be one of struggle, heartache, medical malpractice, and abandonment.

By outside appearances, she was like any other Kennedy, with her father's easy smile and her mother's nest of dark hair. But she wasn't as active as her older brothers Joe Jr. and Jack. She struggled in school.

Rosemary's disabilities soon became impossible to ignore, and years later, when trying to understand her daughter's issues, Rose sought the advice of physicians, who returned the diagnosis of "mental retardation," "genetic accident," and "uterine accident."

Sending Rosemary to an institution was too extreme for Rose and Joe Sr. to contemplate. Even for the wealthy, hospitals for people with disabilities were houses of horror—filthy, staffed with under-qualified caregivers and criminals, with patients often chained to walls and subjected to physical and sexual abuse and medical experiments.

By 1940 Rosemary was watching her siblings begin their lives and careers, while she wasn't even allowed outside alone. Plotting the political career of his two eldest sons, and wanting to avoid scandal Joe Sr. sought a cure for his daughter's erratic behavior. At the time, lobotomy was heralded as a cure for the physically disabled and mentally ill, so he began speaking to America's leading lobotomy practitioners.

Doctors and families, desperate for a cure for mental illness, eagerly embraced the hope promised by this new treatment. According to NPR, newspapers described the procedure as "easier than curing a toothache." The United States had the highest rate of lobotomies of any country in the world, with 40,000 to 50,000 performed between the 1930s and 1970s.

Despite the fanfare, negative side effects were immediately apparent. Whether out of desperation or determination, Joe Sr. went ahead with the surgery. Rosemary was strapped to a table and given an anesthetic to numb her brain, where doctors drilled two small holes. She was wide awake the whole time.

The hope was the procedure would subdue Rosemary and end her rebellious jaunts about town. But the result was far more extreme: After the lobotomy, Rosemary was no longer able to walk or talk. It took months of therapy before she regained the ability to move on her own, recouping only the partial use of one arm. One of her legs was permanently turned inward. Months after the surgery, when she regained her ability to speak, it was a mix of garbled sounds and words.

For 20 years, Rosemary was hidden from her family. Immediately after the surgery, Joe Sr. moved her to Craig House, a psychiatric care facility where Zelda Fitzgerald once stayed. At the end of the 1940s, Joe Sr. sent her to Saint Coletta's, a residential care facility in Jefferson, Wisconsin, where Rosemary lived until her death in 2005.

Twenty years after the barbaric procedure that derailed Rosemary's life, the Kennedys began to fight for her too. In his book Fully Alive, Timothy Shriver, son of Eunice, wrote that Rosemary's story inspired the entire family to take on a life of service, noting, "Her role is a powerful part of my life."

Rosemary Kennedy's legacy is not a story of tragedy—it's a story of quiet power that would eventually change the quality of life for disabled and mentally ill people across the country.

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[kbot]

Up here in Mass, the Kennedy's are pretty much revered - in some places reviled. What Joe did to his daughter was shameful, and at the same time, "cutting-edge" medical technology. Rose Kennedy was not the only person to have been treated this way during this time. Some of the psych hospitals in Mass were places of horror to their patients and things finally started to catch up to these facilities in he 670s and 70s. The result now is a severe shortage of bed space for psych patients.

The Kennedy's, politically, certainly did a lot of good (and they managed to piss off a lot of people along the way doing it). But in their personal lives they left a lot to be desired. I guess in that regard, they're the same as everyone else....