Disgraced TV Host Charlie Rose Finally Breaks Silence After Shocking Sexual Harassment Settlement

Following his dismissal from CBS News in 2017 due to the #MeToo movement and the termination of his long-running, eponymous PBS talk show, former TV anchor Charlie Rose has settled a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by three women. The plaintiffs stated in the settlement that they do not attribute any “ill intent” to Rose and that they now understand that his actions may be interpreted differently. Attorneys for Rose and the women, who were younger workers who accused him of “blatant and repeated sexual harassment” and “predatory behavior,” submitted court documents this week attesting to the lawsuit’s settlement. The matter was marked as settled on an online court docket. They didn’t reveal the terms.

After years of arguing about the women’s claims and the rejection of their retaliation claims against Rose, the case was scheduled to go to trial in Manhattan on Monday. In a statement, plaintiffs Sydney McNeal, Yuqing Wei, and Katherine Brooks Harris claimed that the litigation process and the mandatory pretrial evidence exchange, known as discovery, had helped the parties “better understand each others’ points of view.” “On reflection, and after having the benefit of discovery, we realize that different people could interpret the conduct in different ways, and therefore we have resolved the claims,” the ladies stated. “We do not assign any bad motive or ill intent to Charlie Rose.”

The seasoned TV personality has already expressed regret for his actions, notably in a statement just before his termination in November 2017 following the allegations of misconduct made by at least eight women. “It is essential that these women know I hear them and I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior,” Rose stated. “I feel very ashamed. Even though I don’t think all of these accusations are true, I acknowledge that I have occasionally acted insensitively and take responsibility for it. Even though I now know I was wrong, I always thought I was chasing shared feelings.

America’s #MeToo movement, which was fuelled by social media and resulted to the collapse of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and “Today” host Matt Lauer, among others, included Rose’s demise. The three women Rose settled with last week were “exploiting the #MeToo movement” in September 2018, when he filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. Recently, Rose has had broadcaster Bob Costas and novelist Michael Lewis as guests on his YouTube interview show. In May 2018, around six months after CBS sacked Harris as an anchor on their morning show, then known as “CBS This Morning,” and PBS and Bloomberg Television withdrew his contract, Harris, McNeal, and Wei filed a lawsuit against Rose and CBS in state court in New York.

Harris began her career at “CBS This Morning,” where she worked as a broadcast associate. She eventually became an associate producer for Rose’s PBS program. Rose’s executive assistant was McNeal. Wei first worked as Rose’s news associate and then as her anchor assistant on “CBS This Morning.” The women, who were all in their early twenties when they were employed, claimed that Rose, who was significantly older, had harassed them sexually while they were working, asking about their sex lives and boasting about his own. “They were hired because he likes ‘tall women,’ i.e., he was attracted to them,” according to Harris and McNeal, and Wei claimed that Rose called her “as China doll.”

In December 2018, CBS reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount. The women had asked that the terms be kept private, according to the network at the time. In court documents, Rose’s attorney stated that he would use information demonstrating Harris, McNeal, and Wei had previously voiced little to no worry about the ex-anchor in order to cast doubt on their allegations if the case went to trial.

Documents demonstrating that Wei told a CBS human resources officer that she had no “sexually inappropriate” experiences while working for Rose and that McNeal told her therapist at the time that she had no personal experience of sexual harassment by Rose were among the evidence, according to a filing made on November 13 by attorney Jonathan Bach. According to other evidence Bach provided, Harris had informed her therapist that Rose’s harassment was “very subtle” and that, two months after she started working for him, she had written to Rose stating that their encounters were “always professional and respectful.”