Ex-ABC News exec says Chris Cuomo groped her
NEW YORK — A television executive who accused Chris Cuomo of groping her at a party 16 years ago says the CNN anchor needs a public education about sexual harassment and if he did that, “he’d be a hero instead of a cad.”
The executive, Shelley Ross, said Friday she’s concerned that Cuomo’s reaction to her story and his role advising his brother, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, indicates that he’s learned little about harassment and what it does to women.
“I don’t want to see anybody lose their job,” Ross told The Associated Press. “I want to see people learn and to make the news business a better place and the workplace a better place.”
Her story represented another embarrassment for the host of “Cuomo Prime Time,” generally the network’s top-rated show. He has been criticized for his role advising his brother, Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as New York governor last month over allegations of sexual harassment from multiple women.
Ross said in an opinion piece in The New York Times on Friday that Chris Cuomo had greeted her at a going-away party in 2005 with a bear hug “while lowering one hand to firmly grab and squeeze the cheek of my buttock.”
Ross said Cuomo told her, “I can do this now that you’re no longer my boss,” and she responded, “No you can’t,” pushing him off while stepping back to reveal her husband, who saw the whole thing.
In an interview, Ross called it an attempt to diminish and belittle a female executive in front of her staff.
Cuomo sent an apologetic email to Ross shortly afterward saying he was “ashamed.”
Asked for comment, Cuomo told the Times, “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.” CNN had no additional comment on Friday.
“There was no interaction,” said Ross, former executive producer of the newsmagazine “Primetime Live.” “An interaction has a premise that two people are involved in something. I did not want to be groped.”
“I didn’t know if he had changed from the years we worked together,” she added, “and I see from the response that he hasn’t.”
Cuomo took a scheduled day off Friday from his SiriusXM radio show, the service said. It was not immediately clear if he would be on TV on Friday. CNN referred reporters to Cuomo’s statement to the newspaper.
Ross said she was motivated to tell her story in part because of the fallout faced by some people who had advised the former governor. They included the resignations of Roberta Kaplan and Tina Tchen, two figures in the Time’s Up organization, and Alphonso David, who was ousted as president of the Human Rights Campaign.