Eight women allege TV host Rose made unwanted sexual advances
Eight women have told the Washington Post that longtime television host Charlie Rose made unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.
The women were employees or aspired to work for Rose at the “Charlie Rose” show from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011. They ranged in age from 21 to 37 at the time of the alleged encounters. Rose, 75, whose show airs on PBS, also co-hosts “CBS This Morning” and is a contributing correspondent for “60 Minutes.”
On Monday afternoon PBS, which has aired Rose’s eponymous show since 1991, said it was shocked by the allegations.
“We are immediately suspending distribution of ‘Charlie Rose,’ “said a PBS spokesperson in a written statement. “PBS does not fund this nightly program
or supervise its production, but we expect our producers to provide a workplace where people feel safe and are treated with dignity and respect.”
Rose has also been suspended from CBS, where he co-hosted “CBS This Morning” since 2012 and is a contributing correspondent for “60 Minutes.”
“Charlie Rose is suspended immediately while we look into this matter. These allegations are extremely disturbing and we take them very seriously,” a CBS News spokesperson said in a written statement.
Bloomberg Television, which tapes and rebroadcasts “Charlie Rose,” said it has pulled the show from its television channel.
Similar experiences
There are striking commonalities in the accounts of the women, each of whom described their interactions with Rose in multiple interviews with the Post. For all of the women, reporters interviewed friends, colleagues or family members who said the women had confided in them about aspects of the incidents.
Five of the women spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of Rose’s stature in the industry, his power over their careers or what they described as his volatile temper.
“In my 45 years in journalism, I have prided myself on being an advocate for the careers of the women with whom I have worked,” Rose said in a statement provided to the Post. “Nevertheless, in the past few days, claims have been made about my behavior toward some former female colleagues.
“It is essential that these women know I hear them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that, though I do not believe that all of these allegations are accurate. I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.
“I have learned a great deal as a result of these events, and I hope others will too. All of us, including me, are coming to a newer and deeper recognition of the pain caused by conduct in the past, and have come to a profound new respect for women and their lives.”
Most of the women said Rose alternated between fury and flattery in his interactions with them. Five described Rose putting his hand on their legs, sometimes their upper thigh, in what they perceived as a test to gauge their reactions. Two said that while they were working for Rose at his residences or were traveling with him on business, he emerged from the shower and walked naked in front of them. One said he groped her buttocks at a staff party.
‘He was a sexual predator’
Reah Bravo was an intern and then associate producer for Rose’s PBS show beginning in 2007. In interviews, she described unwanted sexual advances while working for Rose at his private waterfront estate in Bellport, N.Y., and while traveling with him in cars, in a hotel suite and on a private plane.
“It has taken 10 years and a fierce moment of cultural reckoning for me to understand these moments for what they were,” she told the Post. “He was a sexual predator, and I was his victim.”
Kyle Godfrey-Ryan, one of Rose’s assistants in the mid2000s, recalled at least a dozen instances where Rose walked nude in front of her while she worked in one of his New York City homes. He also repeatedly called the then-21-year-old late at night or early in the morning to describe his fantasies of her swimming naked in the Bellport pool as he watched from his bedroom, she said.
“It feels branded into me, the details of it,” Godfrey-Ryan said.
She said she told Yvette Vega, Rose’s longtime executive producer, about the calls.
“I explained how he inappropriately spoke to me during those times,” Godfrey-Ryan said. “She would just shrug and just say, ‘That’s just Charlie being Charlie.’ “
In a statement to the Post, Vega said she should have done more to protect the young women on the show. “I should have stood up for them,” said Vega, 52, who has worked with Rose since the show was created in 1991. “I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.”
Godfrey-Ryan said that when Rose learned she had confided to a mutual friend about his conduct, he fired her.
In addition to the eight women who say they were harassed, the Post spoke to about two dozen former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Six said they saw what they considered to be harassment, eight said they were uncomfortable with Rose’s treatment of female employees, and 10 said they did not see or hear anything concerning.
“He was always professional with me,” said Eleonore Marchand Mueller, a former assistant of Rose’s who worked for him from 2003 to 2005. “I never witnessed any unprofessional incidents.”
The show’s informal structure, with roughly 15 employees, and the centrality of Rose’s authority on a program he owns led to uncertainty over how to respond, said the women who felt victimized. “There wasn’t anybody to report this to if you felt uncomfortable,” one of them said.
“I explained how he inappropriately spoke to me during those times. She would just shrug and just say, ‘That’s just Charlie being Charlie.’ ” Kyle Godfrey-Ryan, former assistant to Charlie Rose
Young and vulnerable
The employees worked for Charlie Rose Inc., and not Bloomberg LP or PBS, which said they did not provide human resources support for the show.
The environment brimmed with the young and potentially vulnerable, hungry for scarce television jobs. “There are so few jobs,” said one of the women who said Rose groped her. “You know if you don’t behave a certain way, there’s someone else behind you.”
Rose traveled frequently, jetting off to interview world leaders across the globe and splitting time between two New York City residences and homes in Bellport — on Long Island — and North Carolina. Often at his side was a rotating cast of young assistants and producers.
The young women who were hired by the show were sometimes known as “Charlie’s Angels,” two former employees said.
Rose frequently gave unsolicited shoulder rubs to several of them, behavior referred to among employees as “the crusty paw,” a former employee said.
Rumors about Rose’s behavior have circulated for years. One of the authors of this report, Outlook contributing writer Irin Carmon, first heard and attempted to report on the allegations involving two of the women while she was a journalist at Jezebel in 2010 but was unable to confirm them. In the past several weeks in the wake of accusations against Harvey Weinstein, Carmon and Post investigative reporter Amy Brittain began contacting dozens of men and women who had worked on the “Charlie Rose” show or interviewed for jobs there.
A woman then in her 30s who was at the Bellport home in 2010 to discuss a job opportunity said Rose appeared before her in an untethered bathrobe, naked underneath. She said he subsequently attempted to put his hands down her pants. She said she pushed his hands away and wept throughout the encounter.
A woman who began as an intern in the late 1990s and was later hired full time described a “ritual” of young women at the show being summoned by Rose to his Manhattan apartment to work at a desk there.
The woman described a day when Rose went into the bathroom, left the door open and turned on the shower.
She said he began to call her name, insistently. She ignored him, she said, and continued working. Suddenly, he came out of the bathroom and stood over her. She turned her head, briefly saw skin and Rose with a towel and jerked back around to avoid the sight. She said he said, “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”
She said she told someone in the office, and word got around. A few days later, she said, a male colleague approached her, laughing, “Oh, you got the shower trick.”