Nearly 30 more women have accused former TV journalist Charlie Rose of sexual harassment and abuse, bolstering the accounts of eight other women who came forward in November and whose allegations led to his firing.
Fourteen women who worked with him at CBS News and 13 others who worked with him elsewhere shared new incidents including of unwanted advances, groping, and lewd comments with the Washington Post dating back to 1976.
While CBS has repeatedly denied knowledge of Rose’s behavior before the original Washington Post report in November, the paper’s additional reporting revealed that three women who worked with Rose had complained to managers about his alleged misconduct.
The first time was in 1986, when he was filling in as an anchor on CBS Morning News. A 22-year-old news clerk, Annamarie Parr, told her manager that she didn’t want to be alone with Rose.
“It was a sexual land mine everywhere you stepped,” Beth Homan-Ross, now 61, said of working as an associate producer in the “Nightwatch” Washington office, where Rose was a co-anchor. During the time she worked directly with him, Rose often made sexual remarks about her appearance, sometimes greeted her naked, and more than once asked her to join him in the bathroom while he showered.
Ross was one of seven women who sued CBS for hostile culture at “Nightwatch,” an overnight news broadcast, though Rose was not named in the lawsuit.
After he joined CBS This Morning as a co-host in 2011, another co-worker said that he forcibly kissed her at a holiday party he hosted. She reported him to then-executive producer Chris Licht, but asked him not to take the complaint to human resources.
Another woman said she reported Rose to executive producer Ryan Kadro after she said that Rose was paying unusually close attention to a 24-year-old named Brooks Harris. Kadro responded in the Washington Post article by saying there was no mention of misconduct, saying he was not told “about inappropriate behavior by Charlie Rose towards Ms. Harris at any time.”
One former assistant, who is suing Rose along with Harris and other co-workers, told the Post that working for him was “toxic” and that it “made me question my intelligence, dignity and worth as a human being almost every day.”
CBS responded to the new allegations by saying that all the managers who were alerted handled the situations according to company policies at the time.
“Since we terminated Charlie Rose, we’ve worked to strengthen existing systems to ensure a safe environment where everyone can do their best work,” a CBS spokesperson said in a statement to the Post. “Some of the actions we have taken have been reported publicly, some have not. We offer employees discretion and fairness, and we take swift action when we learn of unacceptable behavior.
“That said, we cannot corroborate or confirm many of the situations described. We continue to look for ways to improve our workplace and this period of reflection and action has been important to all of us. We are not done with this process.”
The company also added that in-person training for sexual harassment is now mandatory for all employees.
Rose’s response? Just one sentence: “Your story is unfair and inaccurate,” he told the Post via email.
