CBS suspends Rose, PBS halts show after report of unwanted sexual advances

Charlie Rose apologized Monday after eight women accused him of sexual harassment from the late 1990s through at least 2011, including incidents at his Bellport home.

PBS said it is immediately halting distribution of Rose’s interview program and CBS News suspended him following the report in The Washington Post.

“In my 45 years in journalism, I have prided myself on being an advocate for the careers of the women with whom I have worked,” Rose, 75, said in a statement provided to the Post.

“Nevertheless, in the past few days, claims have been made about my behavior toward some former female colleagues. It is essential that these women know I hear them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior,” he said.

“I am greatly embarrassed,” his statement continued. “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.”

While five of the women requested anonymity, three came forward by name. 

Reah Bravo was an unpaid intern and then associate producer for Rose’s program beginning in 2007.

Rose had offered her a paying assignment to spend a week at his Bellport home, staying in a guest house, while she catalogued his books, files and media there.

On two such visits and on subsequent business trips, she said, he groped her and attempted to appear before her naked.

“It has taken 10 years and a fierce moment of cultural reckoning for me to understand these moments for what they were,” Bravo told the newspaper “He was a sexual predator, and I was his victim.”

Kyle Godfrey-Ryan, one of Rose’s assistants in the mid-2000s, also told of his walking nude around her while working at one of his homes, and of unwanted late-night and early-morning sexually explicit calls. Megan Creydt, a coordinator on the show from 2005 to 2006, told the paper of unwanted touching and other sexual misconduct.

Others spoke anonymously, citing fear of career retribution and of what they characterized as Rose’s combustible anger.

The newspaper said it additionally spoke to numerous workplace witnesses and to people to whom the women described the improprieties at the time they occurred.

Yvette Vega, Rose’s longtime executive producer, told The Post in a statement, “I should have stood up for” women reporting Rose’s behavior to her. “I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.”