Erin Andrews speaks out on the 'unimaginable violation' of secretly filmed nude video in hotel room
In 2008, sports commentator Erin Andrews received a phone call that would turn her entire life upside down.
This week, she reflected on the moment she learned a stalker had secretly filmed her walking around a hotel room naked, before uploading the footage to the internet for billions to see.
The 48-year-old made an appearance on Alex Cooper's much-loved Call Her Daddy podcast on Wednesday (2 Sept), where she confessed to fearing the heartbreaking incident would tarnish the career she'd worked so hard to achieve, and revealed how she was able to make it through to the other side.
The star began by reminiscing on the stage of her work she'd been enjoying at that point, claiming she was in line to hire a new agent, that television shows had enquired about her joining their line-up, and that she'd been invited to attend several huge-name award shows.
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Despite this, Andrews insisted that, in 2008, she hadn't yet been able to view herself as a particularly famous person, and continued checking into hotel rooms using her real name.
Little did she know, however, that she was already being stalked by a die-hard fan who managed to record a video of her walking around a hotel room naked, which he subsequently leaked online.
"I got a call from my friend who was working as a blogger at the time," Andrews explained. "He'd been calling me all day. He just said, 'Erin, I have to talk to you', and I was like, 'What's up? I'm about to get on a red-eye going back to Atlanta'.
"He was like, 'There's a naked video of you all over the internet', and I said, 'No, there's not; I don't do that'."
The pal then sent Andrews the video in question, after which the reality dawned upon her, prompting her to call her parents in such a panicked state that they assumed she'd been in a car accident.
"I said to my dad, 'It's over, my career is over, nobody is going to take me seriously ever again'. That's all I ever wanted, right - for people to turn me on [the TV] and think, 'I'd love to have a beer and talk football with her'.
"I just thought, this is so dirty, no one is ever going to want to work with me again, talk with me again, this is gross. This changes who I am."
Following an FBI investigation, Andrews discovered that the individual who had recorded a video of her walking around a Nashville hotel room naked was named Michael David Barrett.
It had been shot through a peephole before going viral.
Appearing in court, Barrett later claimed he'd been motivated by money and hadn't considered how Andrews might feel.
During a testimony in which she repeatedly broke down, the ex-ESPN star admitted: "I felt embarrassed, humiliated, mortified because of the video.
"Everybody put up that I was doing it for publicity and attention and that ripped me apart."
A second video - which was thankfully never made public - was also discovered on Barrett's computer, showing Andrews nude in her room during a stay at the Radisson in Milwaukee.
The broadcaster sued Barrett, the Marriott hotel at Vanderbilt University - where Andrews had been staying to cover a football game - at the time after accusing staff of negligence for allowing him to rent a room beside hers.
She also took legal action against Radisson Hotels, along with five other entities.
In 2010, Barrett was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison, as well as three years' probation, $5,000 in fines and $7,366 in restitution.
"The crazy part now is seeing how the world and perception - how people aren't judged like this," Andrews told Cooper this week. "If a crime like this has happened, it would have been a totally different situation."
Rhianna Benson