(Headline USA) Former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo was reportedly accused of sexual assault by one of his former colleagues right before he was fired from the network, according to the New York Times.
CNN’s lawyers received a letter in December from a woman claiming Cuomo had sexually assaulted her years ago, the report said. The woman, who was not named in the letter, said that while she and Cuomo both worked at ABC News in 2011, the anchor invited her to his office for lunch, badgered her for sex, and then assaulted her.
Several years later, Cuomo allegedly reached out to the woman during the height of the “Me Too” movement, according to the letter sent to CNN’s lawyers.
“After years without any substantive communication from Mr. Cuomo whatsoever, Ms. Doe suspected he was concerned about her coming forward publicly with her allegations and wanted to use the proposed segment as an opportunity to ‘test the waters’ and discourage her from going on the record about his sexual misconduct,” the letter said.
Shortly after receiving the letter, CNN fired Cuomo.
But Cuomo had been accused of sexual misconduct before, by another former ABC News colleague, who said in September that he inappropriately touched her at a going-away party for a colleague in 2005.
“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,” Shelley Ross, a former executive producer for ABC, wrote in an op-ed.
She said he commented: “I can do this now that you’re no longer my boss” while her husband was standing right beside her.
Afterwards, Cuomo sent her an email apologizing for the incident.
“[T]hough my hearty greeting was a function of being glad to see you … christian slater got arrested for a (kind of) similar act, (though borne of an alleged negative intent, unlike my own)…and as a husband I can empathize with not liking to see my wife patted as such,” he wrote, adding that he also wanted to apologize to Ross’s “very good and noble husband.”
