Chicago- Choking back tears and quivering with rage, the Chicago woman who says William Kennedy Smith raped her five years ago said yesterday she was the victim of a “violent act that will haunt me to the day I die.”
“On Jan. 16, 1999, my innocence was involuntarily taken from me by a man I trusted and respected,” Audra Soulias said.
Soulias said she’s going public with her charges now because Smith, who beat a rape rap in Florida 13 years ago after a highly publicized trial, continues to prey on women.
“I am putting William Kennedy Smith on notice,” she said. “You will not victimize one more woman if I can help it.”
Smith, 43, a doctor and nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy and the late President Kennedy, has denied Soulias’ charges and says she demanded $3 million to keep quiet.
“This is not about money,” said Soulias, 28. “I don’t want to see one more woman victimized by this man. Enough is enough.”
But confronted with bankruptcy records showing Soulias is more than $91,000 in debt, her attorney, Kevin O’Reilly, insisted Smith’s reps “initiated negotiations” after he sent them a complaint last week.
O’Reilly also admitted that Soulias and Smith dated for five to six months after the alleged attack but called it a “forced relationship, one of dominator to dominated.”
He added that Soulias was a virgin before Smith allegedly attacked her.
Soulias is seeking at least $50,000 in compensation. The lawsuit alleges she has suffered “great physical and emotional pain and discomfort” and “a permanently impaired earning capacity.”
Paul Ciolino, a Chicago gumshoe who said Soulias passed his polygraph exam, said she didn’t report the attack to police in 1999 because she feared nobody would believe her.
“Everyone had the same advice: Don’t do it, you’ll be destroyed,” he said. “They’ll just do to you what they did to that woman in Florida.”
Ciolino was referring to Patricia Bowman, who accused Smith of assaulting her at the Kennedy clan’s Palm Beach estate and whose reputation was dragged through the mud in a sensational trial. She could not be reached for comment.
Smith, who founded the Center for International Rehabilitation – an anti-land-mine group – after his 1996 acquittal, was silent yesterday. But a CIR statement said the allegations stem from a “disgruntled employee who had failed to receive a promotion.”
In her lawsuit, Soulias identified two former co-workers who have accused Smith of sexual harassment. She said when Smith learned she had reached out to their lawyer, he called her Jan. 9 and said he got some “disturbing news.”
“This is a situation where a predator is coming back for his prey,” said O’Reilly, who described Smith’s call as “threatening.”
Soulias, who was Smith’s personal assistant at CIR, says her boss crashed her 23rd birthday party, plied her with liquor, then dragged her to his townhouse, where he attacked her. Afterward, he left several voice messages in which he apologized and admitted, “I have a problem.”