What We Know About The Sexual Harassment Accusation Against Chris Cuomo
It was just over a month ago that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo resigned after being accused of sexually harassing multiple women. Now, his brother, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, is being accused of sexual harassment in a cringeworthy essay in The New York Times.
A former executive producer at ABC, Shelley Ross, has come out with her story about how the TV newsman treated her at an industry party 16 years ago in light of the events surrounding the former governor and the CNN host's subsequent pursuit of the "truth" (via People).
Ross recounts in her New York Times piece about her encounter with Cuomo, "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." She goes on to write that the CNN veteran told her, "'I can do this now that you're no longer my boss.'" She noted his comment rang 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," Ross continued in her shocking essay.
Shelley Ross does not want Andrew Cuomo to resign
As Ross writes in her piece, Cuomo later emailed her, the subject line of his note being, "Now that I think of it ... I am ashamed" (via The New York Times). The eventual CNN anchor wrote in his email that as a husband, he understood her husband wouldn't have liked his display — Cuomo has been married to his wife Christina since 2001 (via Yahoo!). Cuomo apologized to both Ross and her husband.
"I have no grudge against Mr. Cuomo; I'm not looking for him to lose his job. Rather, this is an opportunity for him and his employer to show what accountability can look like in the MeToo era," Ross writes.
She also goes on to say, "I never thought that Mr. Cuomo's behavior was sexual in nature. 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 suggests that Cuomo "study the impact of sexism, harassment and gender bias in the workplace, including his own, and then report on it."
At time of writing, CNN had not commented on Ross' accusation (via New York Post). For his part, Cuomo said, "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."