Kennedy cousin accused

last updated 8 January 2015

Chicago

A former employee filed a lawsuit last week accusing William Kennedy Smith of raping her five years ago. Audra Soulias, 28, who was Smith’s personal assistant in 1999, said he bought her drinks to celebrate her birthday, and later “dragged me into his house, dragged me upstairs in his bedroom, where he raped me.” Smith, a nephew of the late President John F. Kennedy, was cleared of raping a Florida woman in 1991. He called the new allegations “outrageous.” He said Soulias, who acknowledged having consensual sex with him several times, had offered to drop the suit for $3 million. “Unfortunately,” he said, “my family and personal history have made me unusually vulnerable to these kinds of allegations.”