Charlie Rose Suspended From CBS, PBS, Bloomberg After 8 Women Accuse Him of Sexual Harassment

‘I Was Hunting for a job…and He Was Hunting for Me’

Eight women are accusing longtime journalist Charlie Rose of sexual harassment, including walking around naked in front of them, groping, lewd telephone calls, and making unwanted sexual advances, The Washington Post reports. Three have gone on the record and given their names. 

“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.'”

CBS has suspended Rose. PBS and Bloomberg, which air Rose’s “Charlie Rose” show, have also suspended production and distribution of Rose’s show, according to The Hollywood Reporter. All did so in under two hours from the time the Post’s article was published.

“It has taken 10 years and a fierce moment of cultural reckoning for me to understand these moments for what they were,” Reah Bravo told The Post. “He was a sexual predator, and I was his victim.” Bravo worked as an intern and later as an associate producer for Rose’s PBS show.

Rose’s executive producer Yvette Vega, according to another woman, Kyle Godfrey-Ryan, “would just shrug and just say, ‘That’s just Charlie being Charlie.'”

Godfrey-Ryan “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 also told the Post that after she told a mutual friend about Rose’s behavior, he fired her.

Vega told The Post, “I should have stood up for them,” adding, “I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.”

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.

Another woman, the last in the Post’s reporting, describes more aggressive behavior, which certainly sounds like sexual assault. The Post and the unnamed woman do not use that term. 

She said he then tried to put a hand down her pants.

“By the time he touched me the first time, he was already very angry,” she said. “I was scared, and I was also kind of frozen.” 

After that, her memory is “hazy,” she said. They ended up in his bedroom. 

“I really, honestly, I’ve tried so hard, especially recently, since I’ve been thinking about this, to try to remember what happened between sitting by the pool and being in his bed,” she said. “I have no recollection of how we went from here to there. I do remember I was crying the entire time.”

He reached down her pants again, she said, and she pushed his hands away. As she wept, she said, Rose asked her, “Baby, oh baby, why are you crying?”

***

“I was hunting for a job,” she told The Post, “and he was hunting for me.”

The Post’s reporting is, as usual, extensive and the allegations appear well-documented. It also includes a statement from Rose, which reads, in part:

“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.”

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