The chairman and chief executive of CBS resigned last night after an explosive article in the New Yorker detailed allegations of sexual assault and harassment by multiple women. The experience of one alleged assault was related by Phyllis Golden-Gottlieb, a veteran television executive who worked with Moonves in the 1980s:
Moonves, she recalled, came into her office in the middle of a workday and suggested the two of them go out for lunch. Instead of taking her to a nearby restaurant, she said, Moonves drove her to a secluded area. When Golden-Gottlieb began to ask if he was having trouble finding a parking space, she said that Moonves “grabbed my head and he took it all the way down onto his penis, and pushed his penis into my mouth.” She said he held her head in place forcibly. “He came very quickly,” she recalled. “You sort of just go numb. You don’t know what to do.”
Moonves has denied the allegations. But in a statement following Moonves’s resignation on Sunday, CBS said Moonves will not receive any severance benefits at this time and any future payments would be dependent on the outcome of independent investigations into the allegations.
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