FORMER A Current Affair journalist Caroline Marcus says staff and management at Channel 9 were aware Ben McCormack was open about his attraction to young boys but did not act.

McCormack was convicted last week for having sexually explicit conversations about children on secret chatrooms and ordered to pay a $1000 fine and go on a three-year good behaviour bond.

Ms Marcus — who now works at Sky News and previously worked on the Daily and Sunday Telegraphs — told Peta Credlin on Sky News last night that McCormack would make sexually suggestive comments about underage boys in the newsroom which were ignored.

She revealed the program’s then executive producer Grant Williams had suspicions about McCormack before his arrest and had tried to “get rid of him” but was unable to.

Nine denied the allegations, saying Ms Marcus had an “axe to grind against Ben”.

McCormack had received a warning after Ms Marcus made a complaint about workplace behaviour in an unrelated matter in 2014.

“But I was quite troubled when I worked there about how open and brazen he was in talking about his attraction to young boys,” she said.

“The thing that saddens me and angers me is that there still seems to be some sort of protection. There are colleagues that during the court case, during the proceedings, that would be taking him out to bars ... they had been quite public in their support.”

She said Mr Williams had been moved on from the show to another role at the network after trying to pull some staff into line over their support of McCormack, resulting in those staff members making complaints against him.

A Nine spokeswoman said management had “no prior knowledge of the claims being made in relation to the charges against Ben McCormack”.