was sent to a convent school in Washington, D.C. Rosemary began sneaking out of the convent school at night. The nuns at the convent thought that Rosemary might be involved with sexual partners, and that she could contract a sexually transmitted disease or become pregnant. Her occasionally erratic behavior frustrated her parents; her father was especially worried that Rosemary's behavior would shame and embarrass the family and damage his and his children's political careers. When Rosemary was 23 years old, doctors told her father that a form of psychosurgery known as a lobotomy would help calm her mood swings and stop her occasional violent outbursts. Joseph Kennedy decided that Rosemary should have a lobotomy; however, he did not inform his wife of this decision until after the procedure was completed. The procedure took place in November 1941. In Ronald Kessler's 1996 biography of Joseph Kennedy, Sins of the Father, James W. Watts, who carried out the procedure with Walter Freeman (both of George Washington University School of Medicine), described the procedure to Kessler as follows: Watts told Kessler that in his opinion, Rosemary did not have "mental retardation" but rather had a form of depression. A review of all of the papers written by the two doctors confirmed Watts' declaration. All of the patients the two doctors lobotomized were diagnosed as having some form of mental disorder. Bertram S. Brown, director of the National Institute of Mental Health who was previously an aide to President Kennedy, told Kessler that Joe Kennedy referred to his daughter Rosemary as mentally retarded rather than mentally ill in order to protect John's reputation for a presidential run, and that the family's "lack of support for mental illness is part of a lifelong family denial of what was really so". It quickly became apparent that the procedure had not been successful. Kennedy's mental capacity diminished to that of a two-year-old child. She could not walk or speak intelligibly and was incontinent. Aftermath After the lobotomy, Rosemary was immediately institutionalized. She initially lived for several years at Craig House, a private psychiatric hospital 90 minutes north of New York City. In 1949, she was relocated to Jefferson, Wisconsin, where she lived for the rest of her life on the grounds of the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children (formerly known as "St. Coletta Institute for Backward Youth"). Archbishop Richard Cushing had told her father about St.