#ABC News president calls for probe of assault allegations: report

ABC News president Kim Godwin is calling for an independent investigation into how the network handled allegations of sexual assault against a former executive producer of “Good Morning America,” according to a new report.

The Wall Street Journal said Godwin relayed the request on a conference call to staffers Thursday, a day after a lawsuit was filed against Michael Corn, who is being accused of sexually assaulting a current ABC News staffer, as well as a former network employee in separate incidents.

Corn, who held the top producing role at ratings behemoth “GMA” until this April, has denied wrongdoing and called the claims “fabrications,” citing collegial email exchanges with both women shortly after the incidents were alleged to have occurred, the Journal reported.

ABC, which is also named in the lawsuit, “swept the sexual assault under the rug” to protect Corn, and “did not publicly acknowledge” the producer’s actions, which include complaints of misconduct by several other women, the suit claimed.

“We can’t have us investigating us. We need an independent person,” Godwin said via a recording of the conference call that was leaked to the publication. “The process has to be independent.”

Godwin, who joined ABC in May from CBS News, wasn’t at the network when Corn departed. She assured ABC News staffers who were involved in handling complaints against Corn that they would get due process, but their roles would be investigated.

The exec, who lived through CBS’ own scandal-ridden past of sexual misconduct under then-CEO Les Moonves, told ABC staffers that she isn’t going to allow “sweeping this under the rug.”

She said she has heard from enough people over the past day “to know we have a problem.”

ABC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The network is accused of doing nothing to protect an employee who complained about the alleged assault when it learned of it in 2017, according to the suit.

Kirstyn Crawford, 31, an anchor producer for George Stephanopoulos on “GMA,” claimed in court papers that Corn sexually assaulted her after a work party in Los Angeles with the team covering the Academy Awards. 

Despite her efforts to “pull away,” a drunken Corn pulled her head into his chest and began kissing her and rubbing her legs while in an Uber together. During the ride, he “grabbed Crawford’s hand and told her that he wanted to be able to help her with her career,” the court papers say.

When they got to the hotel, Corn allegedly pretended to lose his room key in a “devious ploy” to get into Crawford’s room. In an attempt to divert him from her room, Crawford  accompanied Corn to his room instead, according to the suit.

She sat on the corner of his bed at his invitation, the suit said, adding that he “pulled her down onto the bed and pulled her head onto his chest” before he kissed the top of her head, petted her hair and stroked her arm.

She managed to go back to her room, but her boss would later barge into her room where she begged him to leave, which he eventually did, the suit said. 

ABC learned of the assault in 2017, but court papers claim the network “did nothing to protect plaintiff or removed Corn from his position of power.”

Corn is also accused of sexually assaulting Jill McClain, who was working for Diane Sawyer at the time on “World News Tonight.” The lawsuit gives lurid details of a flight from LA to New York in September 2010, in which Corn— seated next to McClain — allegedly rubbed her “upper right thigh with his left hand” and then “slid his hand from McClain’s upper right thigh to her vagina,” and began to rub “her vagina, over her jeans.”

A year later, while the team was in London covering Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding, a drunk Corn barged into McClain’s hotel room and sexually assaulted her, the court documents said.

The producer kissed McClain and shoved her onto the bed, pulling down the top of her jumpsuit and her bra and groping her bare chest, the suit said, noting that McClain was able to fight him off and yelled at him to get out, which he did “in a huff.”