CNN anchor Chris Cuomo is facing allegations that he sexually harassed a former television producer in a Manhattan bar in 2005.
Shelley Ross who worked for ABC News and CBS News alleged Cuomo grabbed her inappropriately at a work party in front of her husband. Ross made the allegations in New York Times op-ed Friday.
“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,” she wrote.
Ross served as Cuomo’s executive producer at Primetime Live. The alleged incident occurred while she was serving as the producer of an entertainment special.
“’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.”
Last month, Cuomo’s older brother Andrew, resigned as New York’s Governor following a barrage of sexual misconduct accusations.
Cuomo gave a statement to Ross for her column: “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.”
