Former ABC News Producer Accuses Chris Cuomo of Sexual Harassment

Chris Cuomo is facing allegations of sexual harassment from his former producer at ABC.

In an essay for the New York Times published on Friday (September 24), veteran TV journalist Shelley Ross detailed an alleged encounter she had with the CNN anchor at a work party in 2005.

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“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 wrote.

“’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.”

Shelley worked as Chris‘ executive producer on Primetime Live, but was acting as the producer of an entertainment special when the incident took place.

Shelley went on to say that Chris sent an email a short time later with the subject line “now that i think of it… i am ashamed…” in which he apologized to Shelley‘s “very good and noble” husband and added “and I apologize to you as well, for even putting you in such a position…”

She claims that Chris also wrote in the email, “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…”

Shelley also wrote that she “never thought that Mr. Cuomo’s behavior was sexual in nature. Whether he understood it at the time or not, his form of sexual harassment was a hostile act meant to diminish and belittle his female former boss in front of the staff.”

Chris said in a statement 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.”

Shelley added that while she didn’t want Chris to lose his job, she felt he needed to be held accountable in the wake of his alleged involvement in his brother Andrew Cuomo‘s sexual harassment scandal.

The CNN anchor first discussed the allegations against his brother back in March.