Former ABC News producer who claims she was harassed by Chris Cuomo says CNN's internal review is 'insufficient' as ratings in the suspended host's 9pm slot spike 20% in his absence

• Shelley Ross in September accused Chris Cuomo of grabbing her buttocks at a bar in 2005, when they both worked at ABC News
• On Friday Ross spoke out about Cuomo's indefinite suspension from CNN, announced on Tuesday
• The news anchor was suspended after it emerged the day before that he had provided far more support to his brother's team than he admitted
• His brother Andrew, the former governor of New York, was fighting allegations from 12 women of sexual harassment, and Chris plotted to save his career
• Chris admitted helping Andrew, but was not forthcoming about the full extent of his assistance
• Ross said that CNN needed an independent investigation into the whole saga, as had been done at CBS in 2005 when Dan Rather reported on forged documents
• Initial ratings showed that Cuomo's show, at 9pm on a weekday, performed better without him, and with Anderson Cooper hosting 

A former news producer who accused Chris Cuomo of sexual harassment has dismissed CNN's internal investigation into the anchor's support for his beleaguered brother - while the network has seen ratings soar since their star talking head was suspended.

Cuomo, 51, was placed on an indefinite suspension on Tuesday - a day after the New York attorney general published damaging information.

The documents on Monday showed that Cuomo was far more involved than he had admitted to viewers and CNN executives in helping his brother, Governor Andrew Cuomo, defend himself from accusations of sexual harassment and assault.

Chris Cuomo insisted the assistance was minimal, yet text messages published by the attorney general showed him deeply involved in strategy - seeking information on the accusers, looking for early warning of any new allegations, and crafting his brother's statements.

Shelley Ross, who in September accused Chris of grabbing her buttocks in 2005, said on Friday that CNN's internal investigation was insufficient.

'Only an outside team of professionals can stop malicious, neglectful, or consciously wrong behavior by those who engage in it or enable it,' she told Fox News Digital.

Ross spoke as the first ratings from Cuomo's 9pm ET slot were published - showing that his fill-in, Anderson Cooper, attracted more viewers when he hosted Cuomo's show.

The total number of viewers for Cuomo Prime Time spiked to 897,000 on Tuesday night - the first night without its official host - according to Nielsen TV ratings data posted online by AdWeek's TVNewser website.

That figure was up nearly 19 percent from Monday, when Cuomo attracted just 754,000 viewers.

It also exceed his show's average of 774,000 viewers during November, when it ranked No. 25 among all cable TV news programs - right behind Cooper's.

The highest-rated 9pm anchor was Fox News's Sean Hannity, who drew 3.4 million viewers on average. Rachel Maddow was second for MSNBC, with 1.9 million.

Ross, who began her television career in 1981, worked with Cuomo when they both were at ABC.

She wrote an Op Ed in The New York Times in September, describing the 2005 incident.

Chris Cuomo admitted he had behaved inappropriately, saying in a statement: 'As Shelley acknowledges, our interaction was not sexual in nature. It happened 16 years ago in a public setting when she was a top executive at ABC. I apologized to her then, and I meant it.'

Ross also criticized the way that Chris and his employer had handled the scandal surrounding Andrew Cuomo

Chris had broken journalistic ethics previously, interviewing his brother live on air for jokey segments about the pandemic.

When the news of allegations against the 63-year-old governor broke, Chris helped him - something he admitted to viewers several months later, in May, when confronted by a Washington Post expose.

He was not reprimanded by the network - despite some of his colleagues, including anchor Jake Tapper, saying that it put them all in a difficult position.

On Monday, when the attorney general's report was published, CNN's president, Jeff Zucker, was said to have 'hit the roof', feeling that he had been deceived by Cuomo.

Ross said that she wanted to see an external investigation, in the same style as that carried out into Dan Rather's false allegations in 2005 about then-President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard.

Rather's allegations were found to rely on forged documents.

'In 2005 CBS set the standard when they hired [former U.S. Attorney General] Richard L. Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, retired chief executive of the Associated Press, to investigate the journalism and the corporate culture surrounding Dan Rather's erroneous reporting of President Bush's Air National Guard duty,' she told Fox.

She added: 'When he's invited back, he still should be assigned a series on sexual harassment and ethics in the workplace.'