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Vanity Fair, Annals of Internal Medicine, New Yorker

Troubling Story Surfaces About Moonves’ Behavior in a Doctor’s Office

Sep 10, 2018  •  Post A Comment

In a report published following the news that Leslie Moonves was preparing to resign as chairman and CEO of CBS Corp., Moonves is identified as the subject of a story about a previously anonymous patient who allegedly engaged in inappropriate — some might say shocking — behavior in the office of a female physician.

In a Vanity Fair report published Sunday, William D. Cohan writes that soon after Ronan Farrow broke the story of Moonves’ alleged sexual misbehavior in The New Yorker in early August, “a source familiar with the situation told me that Moonves was the anonymous subject of a recent article published this past May by Dr. Anne L. Peters in the Annals of Internal Medicine, under the headline ‘A Physician’s Place in the #MeToo Movement.’”

In Dr. Peters’ original article, which you can read in full by clicking here, she writes of her encounter years ago in an examination room with a “VIP” patient: “I did my usual initial interview, and then we stood to move to the examination table. He grabbed me as I stepped forward. He pulled himself against me and tried to force himself on me. He did this twice; when I rebuffed him, he stood beside the examination table and satisfied himself.”

Dr. Peters also notes in the article: “The next day, the patient called and apologized. He said that he had a terrible problem and that he had done the same thing with many other women. That he basically couldn’t control himself when alone with a woman. I told him that he needed to get counseling immediately and to never allow himself to be alone with a woman in a room. I never directly heard from him again. However, he has become ever more powerful and venerated in his professional world.”

Cohan writes in Sunday’s Vanity Fair article: “According to an entry in Moonves’s datebook calendar, he went to see Dr. Peters at 7 A.M. on September 17, 1999, when he was the president and C.E.O. of CBS Television. It was his first meeting with Peters, and also his last. But he recalls the visit differently.”

Moonves is quoted saying through a representative, in response to a series of questions from Cohan about the incident: “The appalling allegations about my conduct toward a female physician some 20 years ago are untrue. What is true, and what I deeply regret, is that I tried to kiss the doctor. Nothing more happened.”

5 Comments

  1. First Trump, now this. What is this country coming to?
    I bet all these weirdos are Republicans.

  2. Right. Because only Republicans are creepy to women. Now remind me, is Al Franken a Republican? Or Anthony Weiner? How about Matt Lauer? And Harvey Weinstein was a big donor to which party?

    • Oh come on, buddy. Come on, buddy. This is a power issue, not a political ideology issue.

      Thing is, most rich powerful people are Republicans so… the chips fall awful neat, now don’t they?

  3. Who expects this to happen? Who expects to be in a room with a highly educated individual, to receive a health care diagnosis, without a happy ending?!?!

  4. parker, most rich people are not Republicans. It’s pretty evenly split. It is true however that Republicans tend to give more to charity and take recycling more seriously. I know, I was surprised by both of those studies as well. But this behavior certainly fits the pattern of Moonves that we’re seeing emerge.

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