UPDATED: Fox, National Geographic Investigate Sex Charges Against Neil deGrasse Tyson

0
393
Santiago Felipe/Getty Images
.

The ‘Cosmos’ host has been accused by two women of inappropriate touching and one woman of sexual assault.

Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson is under investigation by Fox, National Geographic and the producers of his scientific docuseries following new allegations of sexual misconduct, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

Two women came forward with claims of inappropriate sexual advances in a story in Patheos on Thursday. In 2014 a first accuser, a former classmate of deGrasse Tyson’s at the University of Texas in Austin, accused him of rape in a blog post.

“We have only just become aware of the recent allegations regarding Neil deGrasse Tyson. We take these matters very seriously and we are reviewing the recent reports,” Fox and National Geographic said in a statement.

The producers of Cosmos added in their own statement, “The credo at the heart of COSMOS is to follow the evidence wherever it leads. The producers of COSMOS can do no less in this situation. We are committed to a thorough investigation of this matter and to act accordingly as soon as it is concluded.”

READ MORE  HERE  AT HollywoodReporter.com

On Dec 1 Tyson issued a detailed denial of three complaints against him, including the rape allegation from years earlier.  Here is the relevant portion of a Fox News story concerning the alleged rape, and Tyson’s denial.  

The third woman, Tchiya Amet, accused Tyson of drugging and raping her when they were grad students at University of Texas in 1984. Amet, who previously went by Staci Hambric, told Patheos that the alleged sexual encounter caused her to drop out of the astronomy program and seek therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I woke up in his bed; I was naked… When he saw that I had woken up, he got on top of me and mounted me, and I passed out again,” Amet recalled.

Tyson said he had a brief relationship with an astro-graduate student that quickly fizzled. He added that they ran into each other a few years later when she was pregnant.

“More than thirty years later, as my visibility-level took another jump, I read a freshly posted blog accusing me of drugging and raping a woman I did not recognize by either photo or name,” Tyson wrote Saturday. “Turned out to be the same person who I dated briefly in graduate school. She had changed her name and lived an entire life, married with children, before this accusation.”

Tyson denied the drug and rape allegation and said it has been used “as a kind of solicitation-bait by at least one journalist to bring out of the woodwork anybody who had any encounter with me that left them uncomfortable.”

THE WHOLE FOX NEWS ITEM CAN BE ACCESSED HERE.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here