The leafy Westchester estate of the Rockefeller clan holds a dark, painful secret for one woman: it’s where, she claims, the family’s chauffeur sexually abused her as a child.
The daughter of David Rockefeller’s chef was just 7 when driver Luis Oliveira molested her in the living quarters she shared with her mom at Hudson Pines, the sprawling manse in Pocantico Hills, she charges in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit seeking unspecified damages from the famed banking family.
The Rockefellers failed to protect her from Oliveira, says the now 39-year-old Pittsburgh resident, identified only as “C.Q.” in court papers.
“An employer who provides housing for a mother and child has a duty to provide a safe place for that employee and her child to live,” the woman insists in court papers filed under New York’s Child Victims Act, which opened a one-year window to revive old sexual abuse claims.
The grandson of oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, David Rockefeller helmed Chase Manhattan Bank in the 1970s, lifting it to a global profile. The father of six died in 2017 at age 101, with a reported net worth of approximately $3 billion.
The woman, who is suing David Rockefeller’s estate as well as his five surviving children, “is still haunted by the memories of her abuse and the betrayal she endured,” according to the claim.
The sprawling 11,000-square-foot home, which the family sold in 2018 for $33 million, features 11 bedrooms and 13.5 bathrooms and sits on more than 75 acres.
Oliveira was an undocumented immigrant whom the family allegedly permitted “to have free and unfettered access” to the girl’s living quarters for much of 1988, said the woman, who declined comment on the case.
She also claims she was once abused by Oliveira in the Rockefellers’ Upper East Side apartment, and said the family ignored warnings from other workers about his inappropriate behavior.