Former Intern Accuses Ex-NBC ‘Superstar’ of Hotel Room Sexual Assault in 1996

A former summer intern for NBC Sports claims Michael Bass, a powerful media industry player who later served as CNN’s programming chief, sexually assaulted her in an Atlanta hotel room during their coverage of the 1996 Summer Olympics.

Aarthi Rajaraman, who was a 20-year-old college student at the time, says in a newly filed lawsuit obtained by The Daily Beast that the alleged attack “triggered a downward spiral of excessive drinking, eating disorders, self-contempt, undermining romantic relationships, and even suicidal ideation.” Rajaraman believes Bass “blackballed” her from becoming a full-time broadcast journalist “because she had refused to willingly engage with him sexually,” according to the complaint. Rajaraman’s life was “derailed” by the attack, it says, while Bass’ career “only thrived and grew in prominence.”

“More than 20 years passed until the #metoo movement and NBC’s ouster of Matt Lauer for similarly unchecked misconduct helped provide [Rajaraman] with the courage, understanding and resolve to, in 2020, contact a lawyer about Defendant Bass’s assault of her during the 1996 Summer Olympics,” the complaint states. “[Rajaraman] finally understood she had been a victim without a voice or recourse, not the one to blame. [Bass] had used his power and clout to proceed as if nothing happened, while [Rajaraman] was made to pay the emotional and career damages.”

Rajaraman believes Bass “similarly abused and assaulted other women” who reported to him at NBC, according to the complaint. The network, Rajaraman argues in the filing, “allowed the unlawful behavior to go on.”

Rajaraman is suing Bass, along with NBCUniversal Media, under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which gives sexual assault victims a one-year “lookback window”—ending this November—in which to file a case that otherwise would have expired under the state’s statute of limitations. E. Jean Carroll, who accused Donald Trump of raping her in a department store dressing room in the mid-1990s, successfully sued the ex-president under the act. Other women have filed suits against high-profile names including former Miramax executive Fabrizio Lombardo, boxer Mike Tyson, director James Toback, and billionaire investor Leon Black.

“My client and I are grateful for the Adult Survivors Act, which has allowed my client to seek justice for her alleged sexual assault and ensuing retaliation—something that a 20-year-old college student at the very beginning of her career was far too scared to do,” Megan Goddard, Rajaraman’s lawyer, told The Daily Beast. “She is standing up for herself and for all women who have endured abuse and retaliation in the workplace.”

In an email, an NBC News spokesperson said, “We have been made aware of the complaint and are reviewing it.”

Bass did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Friday.

Bass was most recently CNN’s executive vice president of programming and a longtime lieutenant (and former Harvard classmate) of former president Jeff Zucker, who was ousted in February 2022 over an office romance. After Zucker’s exit, Bass became interim co-head of the cable network but ended up leaving nine months later. The reasons for his departure weren’t revealed.

His resumé includes producing Katie Couric’s short-lived ABC talk show in 2012 and 2013, and serving as NBC Universal’s senior vice president of strategic initiatives and as a senior executive producer at CBS’s morning shows.

Back in the spring of 1996, when Rajaraman scored a job interview with NBC Sports, Bass was a coordinating producer on the Today show.

For Rajaraman, described in her suit as a “first generation Indian-American and longtime lover of sports who envisioned a career in broadcast journalism,” the summer job as a production assistant was a “dream come true.”

Her complaint notes that she had “no industry connections,” so getting a summer gig as a production assistant to cover the Olympics between her sophomore and junior years at George Washington University was nothing short of “a huge achievement.”

The pay was low, the hours long, and Rajaraman, who was attending GW on a tennis scholarship, would have to pay for her own accommodations in a Decatur, Georgia college dorm while in Atlanta, according to the complaint. It says the interns had to take public transit to work, even though they finished in the wee hours, because cabs were exorbitant on their minimum wage salaries.

Rajaraman knew the grueling job was “widely known as a stepping stone into a coveted network job.”

Still, according to the complaint, some aspects of the work environment jarred her; Rajaraman allegedly learned just a week into her internship that one colleague was having a sexual relationship “with a prominent, married, and much older NBC director.” She claims she later discovered “prominent on-air” personalities were having affairs with younger employees, too, and that senior male staffers “openly talked about their visits to strip clubs and their sex lives, to the discomfort” of Rajaraman and other interns.

NBC “knew that many of its male employees, from Matt Lauer down, regularly used their authority and power to sexually harass and assault young female interns and allowed them to do so with no recourse,” Rajaraman’s suit contends. (The network fired Lauer in 2017 after allegations emerged of “inappropriate sexual behavior” with a subordinate. He has since been accused of exposing himself to women at work, sexually assaulting a staffer in his office, and sodomizing a colleague at a hotel in Russia while covering the 2014 Olympics.)

In the Decatur dorm’s communal bathrooms, Rajamaran would often overhear complaints from fellow female PAs, including one crying on the phone to a married, older, staff producer she was “dating” while on the assignment, the complaint says.

But Bass, she claims in the legal filing, brought his wife and newborn to the office from New York and “appeared to be a really good guy, and a family man.”

In his mid-to-late 30s at the time, Bass “presented as extremely serious and wielded significant authority over [Rajamaran] and the other PAs,” according to the complaint. At NBC headquarters in New York, he was known as a “superstar” who was tight with famous names such as Lauer, Couric, and Al Roker, the suit claims.

About two weeks into the job, a domestic terrorist planted a pipe bomb in Centennial Olympic Park, killing one person and injuring more than 100 others. After coverage of the incident began to wind down, Bass arranged “dinner and drinks” for his team, apparently to take the edge off following the harrowing event. The get-together took place after midnight, and NBC provided alcohol, the complaint alleges.

When Rajaraman went to get her train at around 5 a.m., the complaint alleges, Bass walked with her. She needed a restroom, and Bass allegedly suggested she use the one in his hotel suite.

Rajaraman says she accepted the offer, believing that Bass’ wife and child were in the room, but when she arrived she learned they’d actually flown back to New York.

Once she was in his suite, Bass told her “to sit for a moment and have some water,” the complaint states.

“At this moment, [Rajaraman’s] heart sank, and she began to fear for her personal safety, and her professional career,” the lawsuit states, adding that “she did not want to have a sexual interaction” with her married boss.

The legal filing says Rajaraman, who knew that Bass held sway over her career, “felt that she had no choice but to sit down and she began nervously chatting about work.” Bass, the lawsuit alleges, assaulted her “almost immediately.”

While Rajaraman was frozen in fear, her suit says, Bass stuck his tongue in her mouth, groped her, and forced himself on her.

The complaint says Rajaraman “began to think about how she could escape without greatly angering her boss and risking her personal safety and professional career” and told him she needed to catch the train home. She ran out of the hotel, the filing adds, and took a taxi back to Decatur even though it cost her nearly a day’s wages.

Rajaraman says she was in a state of shock over the incident and cried hysterically afterward. When she finally fell asleep, Bass allegedly called her dorm room and told her, “That shouldn’t have happened.” The complaint says he then issued a threat: “Don’t tell anyone.”

Rajaraman responded only with, “OK,” according to the complaint, and returned to work the next day.

When she confided in a friend that night over dinner, the complaint alleges, “They both agreed that if she pursued legal action it would be very unlikely that anyone would believe a young, college student with no connections over a powerful NBC executive.”

Rajaraman, the complaint says, “often wondered if she had done something to ask for this assault and punished herself.”

She later contacted Bass for help in getting a TV job, in part because of the glowing feedback he’d given her before the alleged assault, but Bass “was cold and rigid, and he refused to make eye contact with her,” the complaint alleges.

“Bass curtly ended the meeting and made clear that he would not help her in her career efforts,” the complaint states.

He later barred her from “multiple job opportunities in New York, where he exerted great influence.”

Rajaraman moved to Barcelona in the mid-2000s, where she now teaches sports media and marketing at the ESEI International Business School. She continues to freelance as a TV producer, according to her bio, and has worked on, among other shows, the venerable CBS news magazine 60 Minutes, per IMDb.

Rajaraman is seeking a jury trial and a financial judgment against Bass and NBC, which she says enabled Bass’ behavior.