Ted Kennedy — His Sick Sexual Harassment Secrets

Ted Kennedy is hailed as the "Lion of the Senate," but he was also one of Washington, D.C.'s most notorious boozehounds and harassers of women — with antics that almost sparked an investigation by the U.S. Attorney General!

Kennedy managed to miraculously survive the Chappaquiddick scandal of 1969, where he swam to safety and hid away after driving off a bridge — leaving his companion Mary Jo Kopechne to drown. But the notorious brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy never toned down his wild ways, and had to survive a new sex scandal just 20 years later, as angry activists demanded a political investigation into his sex life!

A political watchdog group demanded that the U.S. Attorney General investigate Senator Kennedy after a Washington newspaper report that he had made love with a beautiful blonde woman on the floor of a Capitol Hill restaurant! The Washington Times article also charged that the heavy-drinking Kennedy also regularly made sexual advances to waitresses and young female restaurant customers.

The Times bombshell exclusive on March 2, 1989, charged that Kennedy had been discovered in 1987 with a woman on the floor of a private dining room at La Brasserie. The paper reported: "An unsuspecting waitress who walked in on Mr. Kennedy and his companion at a most inopportune moment and other La Brasserie employees she told of the incident were warned by the restaurant's owners — at the demand of Mr. Kennedy's staff — not to talk about it."

And just the month before, multiple news services reported that the Senator had gotten into a drunken shouting match at a New York singles bar. In April, The National ENQUIRER reported that Kennedy was still acting up in public. "Teddy likes to take a table near the ladies' room in La Brasserie so he can watch the girls go by," said a source. "He's notorious for getting drunk, then making lewd remarks. He's even grabbed women as they've gone by!"

But while the Times reported that Kennedy sex act at La Brasserie was consensual, a waitress there reported being assaulted by Kennedy in 1985! The woman, Carla Gaviglio, told GQ magazine in 1990 that reporter Michael Kelly's shocking recounting of how the Senators treated her that evening was "full and accurate."

"As Gaviglio enters the room," wrote Kelly, "the six-foot-two, 225-plus-pound Kennedy grabs the five-foot-three, 103-pound waitress and throws her on the table. She lands on her back, scattering crystal, plates and cutlery and the lit candles. Several glasses and a crystal candlestick are broken. Kennedy then picks her up from the table..."

"Kennedy jumps on top," Kelly continued, "and begins rubbing his genital area against hers, supporting his weight on the arms of the chair. As he is doing this, [waitress Betty] Loh enters the room. She and Gaviglio both scream, drawing one or two dishwashers. Startled, Kennedy leaps up. He laughs. Bruised, shaken and angry over what she considered a sexual assault, Gaviglio runs from the room."

"What I saw," added Loh, "was Senator Kennedy on top of Carla...and the tablecloth was sort of slid off the table 'cause the table was knocked over—not completely...and, of course, the glasses and the candlesticks were totally spilled and everything."

Teddy, however, managed to survive the calls for an investigation into his carousing — but was caught up in a new sex scandal by 1991. His nephew William Kennedy Smith was charged with rape in Palm Beach, Fla., after a night of partying with his uncle. By 1992, with his nephew acquitted, the single Senator settled into a marriage to his second wife Victoria — and served as a Massachusetts Senator until his death in 2009.