I may be wrong but I believe he beat up his wife. I believe she was white. Anyone remember?
His first wife was an Italian national (WW2 bride). They had a sexless marriage for a long time. Supposedly Brooke was going to leave her for Walters, but didn’t turn out that way. They had an ugly divorce (possible that allegations of abuse may have been aired, I don’t rightly recall), and it led to his nearly losing renomination in ‘78, and then he lost outright to Paul Tsongas in the general election that year (the liberal Dem Tsongas was more Conservative than the ultraliberal Brooke, whose voting record was identical to Ted Kennedy, his seatmate).