Erin Andrews is opening up to Hoda Kotb about her 2008 stalking incident, and it’s hard not to see how traumatizing it still is 15 years later. The sports reporter was unknowingly videotaped in three different hotel rooms while she was in various stages of undress.
“People thought it was a scandal,” Andrews recalled on Kotb’s Making Space podcast, “I’m the square from high school. I don’t do those things.” She revealed how shocking it all was when a work colleague delivered the horrifying news about the existence of the nude video clips. “I knew the second I got the phone call from my friend at Sports Illustrated that he said, ‘There’s this video,’ and I said, ‘No, there’s not. I don’t do that. I’m single. I don’t have that going on in my life,'” she said.
Andrews’ first reaction was to call her parents with the devastating news. “My dad said he had thought I had been in a car accident,” she recalled while wiping away tears. “Because I was just screaming, and I feel so bad because my parents were incredible.”
Michael David Barrett was sentenced to 27 months in prison with an additional three years of supervised probation. He received a $5000 fine along with $7,366 in restitution. In 2016, she was awarded $55 million in a civil case against Barrett and Marriott hotels. He was on the hook for $28 million and the corporation was responsible for paying her $27 million. Even with the criminal and civil cases working in Andrews’ favor, nothing could ever erase the trauma of such an invasion of privacy.
“It’s proved to me how strong I am,” Andrews told Redbook in 2015. “I couldn’t pretend like it wasn’t a big deal. It was.”
Before you go, click here to see all the most terrifying celebrity stalker stories through the years.
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