Last weekend, I told you that back in 2008, a bottom-feeder fiddled with the peephole in Erin Andrews’ hotel room so he could record her in the nude. The pervert tried to peddle the videos to TMZ in early 2009, but TMZ dragged its feet in reporting him. Partly as a result, the veteran sideline reporter is still dealing with the fallout over seven years after she learned about the videos. This week, Andrews revealed that she is still very much scarred by an outrage that was completely preventable.
Andrews has filed a $75 million civil suit against the pervert who recorded her, Michael Barrett, as well as the owner and management company of a Marriott in Nashville. Marriott International was originally a defendant as well, but has since been dropped from the suit. In an emotional two days of testimony on Monday and Tuesday, Andrews said that she is severely scarred emotionally from learning about the recordings in July 2009. Watch a clip of her testimony here.
Andrews, who broke down several times on the stand, said that the humiliation from these videos “happens every day of my life.” She added that every time someone mentions the videos on Twitter or in the paper, she’s right back to where she was in 2009. She’s also afraid to go on dates because she’s afraid that someone may have seen the video.
According to one expert, some 16.8 million people have seen that video. That should prove the lie to anyone who thinks Andrews is in this for the money. It’s a safe bet her lawyers are playing whack-a-mole to get any mirrors offline; I’ve flagged at least three on YouTube in the last week.
Andrews included hotel owner West End Partners and management company Windsor Capital Group in the suit because hotel staff told Barrett her room number and allowed him to book a room next to her. Had someone at the hotel had the decency to let her know what was happening, Andrews said, “I would have called the cops and we would have gotten him.” To this day, whenever Andrews goes to a hotel, she asks to be moved to a new room. Once she’s in her new room, she checks for cameras and covers the peepholes.
To add insult to injury, a number of people think Andrews herself orchestrated the recordings as a publicity stunt–in effect, suggesting that Andrews scarred herself. Andrews testified that the rumors were so rampant that ESPN, for whom she worked at the time, forced her to grant an interview with Oprah Winfrey to refute the accusations before she was allowed to go back on the field. That flap played a role in her leaving for Fox in 2012.
As evidence of how raw she still is, Andrews bolted from the courtroom when Barrett testified via a pre-recorded deposition. Barrett, who was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison for stalking Andrews and a dozen other women in several other states, said that after seeing Andrews was trending on Yahoo, he decided to take a “business trip” to Nashville.
Barrett testified that he was sitting in the hotel restaurant waiting for his room to be ready when he called the front desk and asked to be connected to Andrews’ room. Since he was calling from the house phone, he was able to get Andrews’ room number–allowing him to check into a neighboring room. He admitted that he did “a horrible thing,” but was in a desperate position due to a series of bad investments.
As nauseating as Barrett’s testimony was, it made the testimony of one of the defense’s experts, hotel security expert Stephen Barth, sound downright laughable. Barth claimed that there was nothing the hotel could have done to stop a man who “was not going to be thwarted.” No, Stephen. In what world does a hotel worth its salt give someone’s room number to someone essentially off the street? Taking this common-sense precaution may have prevented an innocent woman from being scarred.
From where I’m sitting, West End and Windsor must have some REALLY bad lawyers. Their negligence is so outrageous that they should have cut their losses and agreed to pay Andrews what would have amounted to a rounding error in their yearly earnings. They deserve to pay dearly–both financially and reputationally–for not having the decency to settle.
