Ex-ABC News producer: Chris Cuomo sexually harassed me in 2005

The New York Times

Shelley Ross, a former executive producer of ABC's Good Morning America and CBS' The Early Show, alleged in a New York Times opinion essay that Cuomo grabbed her buttock in 2005 while giving her a hug at a bar during a colleague's going-away party. "I never thought that Mr. Cuomo’s behavior was sexual in nature," she writes. "Whether he understood it at the time or not, his form of sexual harassment was a hostile act meant to diminish and belittle his female former boss in front of the staff." Ross writes that Cuomo later apologized. Ross says she's coming forward because "I am a regular viewer of CNN today, so I’ve long watched how he communicates on camera and witnessed at times how he behaved behind the scenes." Ross pointed out how Cuomo repeatedly escapes accountability, including after advising brother Gov. Andrew Cuomo during his sexual harassment scandal. "So here’s another moment involving Mr. Cuomo, the one that stands out most in my experience with him," Ross writes. "'Now that I think of it … I am ashamed,' read the subject line of a 2005 email Mr. Cuomo wrote me, one hour after he sexually harassed me at a going-away party for an ABC colleague. At the time, I was the executive producer of an ABC entertainment special, but I was Mr. Cuomo’s executive producer at Primetime Live just before that. I was at the party with my husband, who sat behind me on an ottoman sipping his Diet Coke as I spoke with work friends. When Mr. Cuomo entered the Upper West Side bar, he walked toward me and greeted me with a strong bear hug while lowering one hand to firmly grab and squeeze the cheek of my buttock. 'I can do this now that you’re no longer my boss,' he said to me with a kind of cocky arrogance. 'No you can’t,' I said, pushing him off me at the chest while stepping back, revealing my husband, who had seen the entire episode at close range. We quickly left. Soon after, I received the email from Mr. Cuomo about being 'ashamed.' He should have been. But my question today is the same as it was then: Was he ashamed of what he did, or was he embarrassed because my husband saw it? (He apologized first in his email to my “very good and noble husband” and then to me for 'even putting you in such a position.') Mr. Cuomo may say this is a sincere apology. I’ve always seen it as an attempt to provide himself with legal and moral coverage to evade accountability. Now, given Mr. Cuomo’s role as a supporter of and counselor to his brother, I am left again wondering about his relationship with truth and accountability. Has this man always cared 'deeply' and 'profoundly' about sexual harassment issues? Does he believe enough in accountability to step up and take some meaningful actions?" Ross concluded her essay by writing that she doesn't want Cuomo to lose his job. "I’m not asking for Mr. Cuomo to become the next casualty in this continuing terrible story," she writes. "I hope he stays at CNN forever if he chooses. I would, however, like to see him journalistically repent: agree on air to study the impact of sexism, harassment and gender bias in the workplace, including his own, and then report on it. He could host a series of live town hall meetings, with documentary footage, produced by women with expert consultants. Call it 'The Continuing Education of Chris Cuomo' and make this a watershed moment instead of another stain on the career of one more powerful male news anchor." Asked for comment, Cuomo said on Thursday night: “As Shelley acknowledges, our interaction was not sexual in nature. It happened 16 years ago in a public setting when she was a top executive at ABC. I apologized to her then, and I meant it.”