Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Says ‘We’ll See What Happens’ When Asked if More Women Will Accuse Him of Sexual Assault

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded with uncertainty when he was asked whether more women will accuse him of sexual assault, after his former babysitter recently came forward with allegations.

"I don't know," he answered. "We'll see what happens."

The independent presidential candidate, 70, was confronted about the issue by someone in line at the flagship L.L. Bean store in Freeport, Maine, on July 9, according to The Boston Globe.

In a Vanity Fair article published on July 2, Kennedy's former babysitter Eliza Cooney alleged that he made inappropriate sexual advances toward her 26 years ago.

Cooney, now 48, told Vanity Fair that she was 23 years old when the Kennedy and his then-wife Mary Richardson Kennedy hired her to be a part-time babysitter for their kids — Conor, Kyra, Aidan and Finn — in the fall of 1998.

Her duties included helping Kennedy, the nephew of late President John F. Kennedy and son of late U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, with his environmental law clinic at Pace University during the week, Vanity Fair reported.

Cooney said she kept a diary at the time and documented every unwanted sexual advance that Kennedy allegedly made toward her. An excerpt of the diary she shared with Vanity Fair claimed that one incident occurred on the evening of Nov. 7, 1998, in the family's kitchen. 

“From everything everybody says about the Kennedys + their Babysitters, they had me worried. Like I have to watch out, be careful. And the other night in the kitchen w/ Murray I could have sworn he was touching my leg + hand,” it read.

“It seemed like he thought I was somebody else or wasn’t paying attention. Like he would come to every once in a while and snap out of it or I would move away. It was like he was on something or really tired or was missing Mary or was testing me.”

Cooney made several other claims in the article, including that Kennedy allegedly asked her to rub lotion on his back in one incident. Another day, after she had taken a yoga class and was still wearing a sports bra and leggings, the politician allegedly “blocked her inside the room, and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts,” the article said.

“My back was to the door of the pantry, and he came up behind me,” Cooney told Vanity Fair. “I was frozen. Shocked.”

PEOPLE reached out to Kennedy's reps for comment when the Vanity Fair article was first published, but did not immediately hear back. PEOPLE could not independently verify Cooney's claims.

Kennedy previously addressed Cooney's allegations on the political YouTube show Breaking Points shortly after the article came out.

"The article is a lot of garbage," he said. "In terms of the other allegations, I have said this from the beginning: I am not a church boy. I am not running [my campaign] like that. I had a very, very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if they could all vote I could run for king of the world."

"Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories and I'm not going to comment on the details of any of them, but I am who I am," Kennedy added.

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"I do have to ask sir, are you denying it or not?" host Saagar Enjeti asked, referring to the "nanny situation."

"I'm not going to comment on it," Kennedy replied.