The Tragedy is that the Kennedy Family hid Rosemary from public view, and no one even knew she existed until JFK ran for President.
When JFK ran for president in 1960 the official family story was that Rosemary was shy and had devoted her life to teaching children in a Wisconsin convent.
Rosemary was only mildly retarded, and considered the prettiest of the Kennedy daughters. She was presented at Court along with her sister Kathleen when her father was the American Ambassador to Britain. When the bombing started, Ol' Joe sent his wife and other children home but Kathleen stayed in a British convent near London. She wrote her father some very sweet letters about how she wanted him to be proud of her.
But when she and Joe returned home puberty must have set in. She saw the difference in treatment between her dating younger sister and herself and she would fly into rages at times. Once she even attacked her small grandfather, 'Honey' Fitzgerald. She would slip out of the house at night, and the parents became terrified that she might get into 'trouble'.
Joe Kennedy did some research on a new technique that promised to calm down people, to make them more placid and agreeable. When Rose was gone on a trip he had Rosemary lobotomized, supposedly without her mother's knowledge. The ice pick-like instrument was inserted under the frontal lobes of the eyes and swished back and forth through the frontal brain.
It was a disaster for Rosemary. She lost her ability to read, write, think, plus her personality and continence. Joe stuck her away in the Wisconsin convent and by all accountants never saw her again. The only family members that ever visited Rosemary were her mother and sister, Eunance.