Ugly truth about the Kennedy dynasty and the litany of women who’ve been destroyed at their hands. They’re the closest thing America has to royalty, but a new scandal embroiling RFK Jr is just the latest to engulf the clan

There is only one question for any woman who gets involved with a Kennedy man: What could you possibly be thinking?

The latest such scandal to rock America involves the married ­former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Democratic party royalty turned Trump supporter) and Olivia Nuzzi (a glamorous, young star reporter sent to cover him for New York Magazine).

Their respective partners have been blindsided by an alleged affair that was apparently never consummated but did reportedly involve some ‘demure’ nude photographs sent by Nuzzi to Bobby Jr. via text message.

On Friday, however, the New York Post published claims that the pair had also engaged in ‘FaceTime sex’.

Details of the alleged relationship emerged some ten days ago when New York Magazine announced the 31-year-old reporter was on leave pending an investigation into her ­conduct.

Asked last week by Fox News whether he had any ‘regrets’ over the incident, 70-year-old Bobby replied bluntly: ‘I never comment on those kind of stories.’

Yet it’s a story that has shaken the nexus of politics, media and Hollywood, breaking through the noise of the wildest presidential election cycle in American history.

A story that once again raises the question of what can possibly explain the increasingly bewildering allure of this dynasty, considering everything we know. And of whether this crisis could finally augur the end of Camelot.

For answers, we have to go back in time. Women and girls historically do not fare well with Kennedy men – be they wives, girlfriends, mistresses, sisters or daughters.

Patriarch Joe Kennedy, a former US ambassador to Britain, was not only politically and financially ruthless, he was also sexually deviant and violent.

Well before he was president, John F. Kennedy would warn any overnight guests of his sisters — many of them teenagers — to lock their bedroom doors at the famed family compound in Hyannis, Massachusetts. ‘The ambassador,’ JFK would say, ‘has a tendency to wander at night.’

Some of these girls, such as ­Winston Churchill’s future daughter-in-law Pamela Harriman, were raped by Joe. Such atrocities were an open secret at the Hyannis compound – which became something of a death star for women.

Joe’s wife, Rose, was ritually humiliated by the constant presence of his ­movie-star mistress, Gloria Swanson, at the dinner table. He also had a near ­decade- long affair with his secretary, Janet Des Rosiers, which began when she was 24 and he was 60.

‘I used to massage Joe’s scalp and neck with Rose in the living room,’ Des Rosiers said years later. ‘I don’t know what she thought her husband was made of.’ Rose took refuge in prescription pills.

A young JFK, meanwhile, was already evincing what would become manifest among generations of Kennedy men: a sinister incestuousness that would see them all attempt to bed each ­other’s conquests.

When JFK was running for ­president, Janet Des Rosiers joined his campaign and one day he slipped her a note. ‘Don’t you think,’ he wrote, ‘it’s about time you found me attractive?’

In 1953, he met the young ­Jacqueline Bouvier — a highly educated debutante from New York City, with the looks, charm and sophistication to match.

He was a 34-year-old US senator and she a 24-year-old ‘inquiring photographer’ for the Washington Times Herald. She was so smitten that she dumped her fiancé, stockbroker John Husted.

Jackie never uttered a word. She simply removed her engagement ring, slipped it into Husted’s suit pocket and walked away.

Jackie wanted Jack Kennedy – and the big life that was sure to follow – no matter the cost.

She knew that he was a playboy. So was her adored father, but Jackie hadn’t loved him any less, either. Women of her station were bred to accept infidelity, and Jackie thought she could handle it.

She was wrong. There were so many women. Among them Pamela Turnure, her own White House press secretary; and Mimi Alford, a teenage intern who Jack had gotten drunk and had sex with in the First Lady’s bed in the White House while she was away.

Mimi had been a virgin. ‘Short of screaming,’ she later wrote, ‘there was nothing I could do to get him off of me.’

JFK had Mimi shuttled around the country as something of a sex toy, forcing her to hole up in motels waiting to be called up for service. In the White House pool, during one of his daily swims, he pointed to his top aide Dave ­Powers and said to Mimi: ‘Mr Powers looks a little tense. Would you take care of it?’

To her everlasting shame, Mimi made her way to Dave, sitting at the lip of the pool, and performed oral sex on him while JFK watched.

Then there was Marilyn Monroe. She was the biggest movie star on the planet, a sex symbol desired by every red-blooded American male, and not only was she having an affair with President Kennedy, she was also having an affair with his brother, US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

Very few people knew, but among those who did was ­Marilyn’s therapist, Dr Ralph Greenson. He was greatly alarmed by what the Kennedy brothers were doing to his patient, and wrote as much to a colleague.

‘Very destructive people,’ Greenson said of the two brothers.

And they were indeed doing grave damage. With JFK having cut off communication with ­Marilyn after she sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to him at Madison Square Garden in May 1962 — practically announcing to all the world that she and the president of the United States were having an affair — Bobby had been left to crisis-manage Marilyn, who was now threatening to hold a press conference and tell the truth.