Robert F. Kennedy’s Son Arrested in Maternity Ward: Tried to Take Newborn Son Outside (Video)
Douglas Kennedy & His Newborn
Robert F. Kennedy’s 44-year-old son Douglas got arrested and charged after clashing with nurses at the maternity ward where his son was born. The event actually happened back in early January, but he was officially arraigned on misdemeanor charges on Thursday night. Kennedy was charged with “harassment and endangering the welfare of a child.” What happened?
Reportedly when his son was 2-days old, the new dad tried to take his baby out of the maternity ward. He had wanted his son to get some “fresh air.” Two nurses tried to stop him. “They called what’s called a ‘code pink,’” said a lawyer for the nurses. “That is, it looks like it’s someone trying to abscond from the hospital with a newborn.”
The nurses were apparently able to stop him from using the elevator but then he tried to exit via the stairs. A nurse tried to block the door and Kennedy allegedly grabbed her wrist and twisted it. The baby’s head “began to move from side to side, and in an attempt to stabilize the baby’s head, nurse Cari Maleman Luciano reached toward the infant’s head,” the police stated. Kennedy then allegedly kicked the other nurse in the groin and fell to the ground in the process while holding his newborn son. He got up and reportedly ran, “down the stairs with the infant until he was stopped by security and escorted back to the infant’s room.”
The baby was — fortunately — fine, having slept through all the chaos. The Kennedy family do not believe that they did anything wrong. “The nurse had no right to attempt to grab our child out of his father’s arms and I, Douglas, was shocked and appalled when she did so,” a statement from the Kennedy’s said.
A doctor from the hospital (who is a close friend of the Kennedys) was with Douglas during the whole ordeal. “I witnessed the incident and I can state unequivocally that the nurses were the only aggressors,” he said. “To charge Mr. Kennedy with a crime is simply incomprehensible to me.”
Now there is no excuse for getting into a physical altercation with the staff of the hospital but do you think the nurses overreacted to a father’s quest to take baby outside?
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No they did not overreact. I would imagine that it’s hospital policy that infants cannot leave until they are officially discharged. This is a case of a rich jerk thinking rules don’t apply to him.
No hospital maternity ward staff will allow anyone to walk around with a fresh baby in his or her arms. If you want to walk around the floor with your baby, they will require you to push it in a little cart. Even if you adopt a newborn, you’ll be required to hold it in your lap as you are wheeled to the front door of the hospital. The staff are responsible for the baby until it leaves the facility and they can’t just let someone walk out into the “fresh air” holding one of their charges, even if the parent is a Kennedy. What an ass.
The line between parental rights and hospital safety protocols have been steadily sliding to the right in favour of hospital safety protocols. This is not right. A father, who is not suspected of being an “at risk” person, has every right to walk around with his child. An infant not being monitored for severe health risks should be able to leave the ward periodically providing the baby’s id band and the parent’s id band matches. Hospitals act like infants belong to them and that’s not true and needs to stop. It’s what gives them the hubris to provide sub-standard labour support (including pit to distress protocols for slow labours, for instance, a practice is dangerous to infants and mothers and dramatically raises the incidence of emergent c-section), separating mothers and infants, supplementing infants with formula against parental wishes and in the absense of serious medical need, etc, etc, etc.
Kennedy shouldn’t have kicked and hit the nurses, of course. However, in the presence of an OB with admitting privileges at the hospital, wtf were those nurses thinking?
Leanne, the nurses were doing what they are trained to do. The rules are in place for a reason.
Don’t all babies have security anklets now? Aren’t all parents told that the baby can’t leave until discharged?
Dro, and all rules are inviolate from now till the end of time? BS. I’m not saying exercise caution, but this takes hospital PROTOCOL (not the same thing as law, since parents rights are legally enforced, hospital protocol is not) a step too far. Again, I don’t condone Kennedy method of asserting his rights. But he still has those rights. Yet another in a long line of reasons most healthy mother-baby pairs should seriously consider home birth: no external agency imposing rules on what you can and can’t do with your own child. And, in addition, I find the sheep like rule following really anti-thetical to what the US continuously claims its supposed to be about. Where are all those Republican “get your government out of my life” crank heads?!
I think they all have their heads inserted up women’s vaginas right about now.
Leanne,
Where was the mother? She wasn’t leaving… just Dad with the baby. That would have put ANY nurse on guard.
Also, the dr with Kennedy was an ER doc, not an OB doc and had no authority.
Leanne, they chose to give birth in that hospital.
The ER doctor was out of line, instead of supporting the nurses, he placed them in a terrible position of playing bad cop. Safety Protocols in place to protect infants from abductions and clumsy parents who drop babies on their heads. They are enforced because it happens and the hospital staff are held accountable. Kennedy is a pig for kneeing a five foot woman in groin just because she was doing her job, he is a coward and a bully because he did not put up a fight with security when they frog marched him back to his room. I hope they sue his pants off.
It saddens me that hospitals have more control over our children then we do. We left hospital on the 3rd day out our own choice; we had her discharged, signed the forms and off we went. It did cross my mind to take her outside for a bit, but obviously I would hate to have to assault a nurse that tries to touch my baby.
If he did hit the nurse, then good on him. No one, and I mean no one, would come between me and my child.
Have a homebirth if you want so much autonomy. Guess they don’t have the balls for that, but he thinks he can bully “staff.”
While I think Leanne makes some very vaild points about our health care system & the treatment women recieve in the OB ward, the practice of not letting a newborn leave the OB ward until officially discharged is there to our society’s worst-first thinking & the over-reaching fear newborns are going to be abducted from hospitals (at which point the hospital is sued for hundred’s of millions of dollars).
They chose to give birth in that hospital, hence they need to follow the rules of that hospital just like every other patient. Obviously, Mr. Kennedy thought he was above the rules since he tried a second time to take the baby outside once he was refuted at the elevator. Famous people feel they are unjustly proscuted when they break the rules, but they gladly accept the perks they recieve for being a public figure (at if you carry the Kennedy name, you’re a public figure); it’s a double edge sword that you just have to accept.
hospital gets my vote..you cant take a baby out before its released for a reason and other than kidnapping you will be putting other babies at risk from any germ your baby may encounter on the outside….he a idoit…did his wife know what he was going to do ? im sure the nurses let him know he couldnt take the baby from the floor before he decided he was a kennedy and rules dont apply to him.. and the grabbing and kicking started charges should be filed and if he struck me while i was doing my job he could have a lawsuit
My biggest question, is why the heck does he want to take a 3-day old baby out for ‘fresh air’ stroll in the middle of winter in the northeast? Weird. But, I’m a Southerner and I don’t do cold.
This winter has been incredibly mild, to say the least. I haven’t looked it up, but it may have been as high as 50 degrees on the day in question. That said, if you look to see what the baby is wearing, it’s not enough for the weather, no matter how unseasonably warm it is. Of course, the baby’s gotta go outside when he’s discharged anyway.
He should obviously never have resorted to violence, but that hospital should rewrite their policies to allow parents to take healthy babies outside of the ward at their discretion.
I have to say…I have given birth to five children and if the hospital staff knew he was the father of the infant then they had no right to stop him from taking his son outside for a walk. I believe it is the parents right to take their children where ever they please. If the mother is aware the father is taking the baby for a walk then there should be no issue. I believe the hospital staff was over reacting because he was a Kennedy.
This baby was 2 days old, not just born hours before. I think it is ridiculous that a father wouldn’t be able to walk around, including outdoors, with his baby. Hospital staff can be bullies and act like they know better than an infant’s parents. My husband and I wanted to take our day old baby home and a couple maternity ward nurses said no way- we had to stay 48 hours… well we talked to a Doctor and were released within a couple hours. There was absolutely no reason we needed to stay another night and day.
Mr. Kennedy may not have overstepped his rights but knowing the policy of the hospital he should have obtained approval to get a waiver of the rules. Since the OB seemed to have no issue with it it probably would not have been hard to do. The nurses’ job is to protect the infants, weather their health or their safety. Just because the ID bracelets match doesn’t mean that he should be able to leave the hospital with the baby before it is discharged. Apparently good relationships have still led to the kidnapping (for lack of a better word) of children by one parent or the other. The hospital is libel and Mr. Kennedy should respect that the rules protect both him and his child. Aside from the legalities, It was January in NY, not the warmest of months, even with the mild winter we have been having. I think the excuse of fresh air is a bit much.
The rules are in place for a reason. What a jerk.
Ok, so what happens if it is the Father and for some reason he is abducting the child. hasn’t anyone considered that the Mother may have been sleeping and he took the baby. Kennedy or not weird people exist, bad marriages exist, not all parents having a baby are in a happy place and he could have had bad intentions. I have had 4 children and was even done wrong by the hospital on #3 by taking him to nursery and not bringing him back for a long time to nurse. We had to go get him. I just think there is a reason babies are pushed in carts and not just scooped up and walked around. If one person is allowed to take a baby outside then everyone is and if that happens it is mass chaos with stupid people sitting outsied with newborn babies and any kind of weather being idiots. I have seen those idiots. You know the lady walking outside waiting to give birth with a cigarette in hand. Nice people.
This is ridiculous. When you have a newborn at a hospital (which I have had two of my own) the hospital rules are that you are allowed to walk the halls of the hospital with the newborn. Our hospital asked that we keep our newborn in the rolling bassinet. We were not allowed to leave the floor for our protection and our babies. You are at the hospital for 2 to 4 days, why can’t you just wait until you are on your own time to do whatever you want. Just follow the rules. This is so ridiculous that it has to be a topic just because one family decides the rules don’t apply to them. The doctors even caution you to not take the newborn out in public for a few weeks to not expose them to anything. At that point it’s your right to do whatever you want.
A mom accidentally dropped her baby in our NICU. Guess who got blamed for failing to enforce protocol? That’s right, the nurses! The nurses don’t make but have to enforce rules for a reason. Dad was just being a jerk for refusing to follow the rules and acting so aggressively.
Just chiming in, there are a reason for these rules. Whether you like it or not, the baby was born in a hospital. You know, where people go when they are sick. He could be unintentionally exposing his child to God knows what, and not just his baby, but every baby in that newborn unit. If he wants to risk that after the baby is discharged, that is fine, but until he leaves the hospital, there are rules. Since the baby was in room, and he was walking around the halls with him, there will only be a couple of days stay. Suck it up. He’ll have YEARS upon YEARS to walk that baby in the fresh air.
Hospitals have policies for a reason! IF Mr. Kennedy was carrying the baby and tripped, the HOSPITAL would be at risk. Mr. Kennedy had NO right to take his newborn off that ward! NO right. Once they CHOSE to have their baby at that facility, they were BOUND by the hospital policy ~ like them or not. The baby is the hospital’s responsibility until discharge and UNTIL discharge the Kennedys, and every other family, need to abide by hospital policy! Taking your newborn to “get air” when it is 2 days old is a piss poor reason to go against policy! AND, to go without the mom, makes his actions suspicious to the hospital. The nurses were absolutely right in this situation ~ like it or not!! Mr. Kennedy is TOTALLY in the wrong. IF that baby would have stopped breathing while outside with dad “getting air”, the hospital would have been at risk. Mr. Kennedy just thinks his name allows him to NOT follow the rules. He needs to learn that even HE must abide by them.