American Notes

The day of reckoning approaches for William Kennedy Smith. The 30-year-old med-school student, a nephew of Senator Ted Kennedy, surrendered to police in Palm Beach, Fla., on Saturday, to face charges that he raped a 29-year-old woman on the family estate over Easter weekend. In a nine-page affidavit that described the alleged crime in clinical detail, Palm Beach County state attorney David Bludworth filed one charge of sexual battery, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 4 1/2 years in prison, and a misdemeanor charge of battery.

Court documents also indicate that Senator Kennedy may have whisked his nephew out of town on Easter Sunday to shield him from a police interrogation about the incident and that the Senator himself ignored requests to speak with investigators. The Kennedy camp last week indignantly denied suggestions of impropriety. But police chief J.L. Terlizzese said his men were "definitely misled" and that the department was looking into why residents in the Kennedy home had not made themselves available to detectives.