Former TV host Charlie Rose has resolved a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by three women in the wake of his #MeToo-era ouster from CBS News in 2017 and the cancellation of his long-running, eponymous PBS talk show.
In settling, the plaintiffs said they assign no “ill intent” to Rose and realize now that his conduct could be subject to interpretation.
Lawyers for Rose and the women — younger employees who accused him of “predatory behavior” and “blatant and repeated sexual harassment” — filed court papers this week confirming that the lawsuit has been resolved. An online court docket listed the case as settled. The terms were not disclosed.
The lawsuit had been set to go to trial Monday in Manhattan after years of sparring over the women’s allegations and the dismissal of their retaliation claims against Rose.
Plaintiffs Katherine Brooks Harris, Sydney McNeal and Yuqing Wei said in a statement that the litigation process and the required pretrial exchange of evidence known as discovery had enabled both sides to “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 women said. “We do not assign any bad motive or ill intent to Charlie Rose.”
A lawyer for Rose, 82, and his production company, Charlie Rose Inc., declined comment.
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The veteran TV host has apologized in the past for his behavior, including in a statement on the eve of his November 2017 firing after at least eight women had come forward to accuse him of misconduct.
“It is essential that these women know I hear them and I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior,” Rose said. “I am greatly embarrassed. 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.”
Rose’s downfall was part of America’s #MeToo reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — a social media-fueled movement that also took down “Today” host Matt Lauer and movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, among others. In September 2018, Rose said the three women he settled with this week were “exploiting the #MeToo movement” when he filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Rose is now hosting an interview show on YouTube where his recent guests have included author Michael Lewis and broadcaster Bob Costas.
Harris, McNeal and Wei sued Rose and CBS in state court in New York in May 2018, about six months after CBS fired him as an anchor on its morning show, then called “CBS This Morning,” and PBS and Bloomberg Television dropped his nightly “Charlie Rose Show,” which had been on the air since 1991.
Harris was a broadcast associate at “CBS This Morning,” and she later worked as an associate producer for Rose’s PBS show. McNeal was Rose’s executive assistant. Wei was a news associate and later an anchor assistant for Rose at “CBS This Morning.”
The women, all in their early 20s when they were hired, accused the much older Rose of subjecting them to repeated physical and verbal sexual harassment while working, including inquires about their sex lives and boasts about his own. Harris and McNeal alleged that Rose said “they were hired because he likes ‘tall women,’ i.e., he was attracted to them,” and Wei alleged that Rose referred to her “as China doll.” The three women also accused CBS of knowingly failing to prevent Rose’s harassment.
CBS settled in December 2018 for an undisclosed sum. The network said at the time that the women had requested the terms be kept confidential.
Had the lawsuit gone to trial, Rose’s lawyer said in court papers that he would challenge the credibility of Harris, McNeal and Wei’s claims with evidence showing they had previously expressed little or no concern about the ex-anchor.
Among the evidence, lawyer Jonathan Bach wrote in a Nov. 13 filing, were documents showing that Wei told a CBS human resources officer that she experienced nothing “sexually inappropriate” while working for Rose and that McNeal confided in her therapist at the time that she had no personal experience of sexual harassment by Rose.
Other evidence cited by Bach showed that Harris had told her therapist that any harassment by Rose was “very subtle” and that she wrote to Rose two months after working for him that his interactions with her were “always professional and respectful.”