Erin Andrews was overcome with emotion as she broke down in tears during her testimony in a Nashville court on Monday, recalling how a stalker secretly filmed videos of her undressing in 2008 and shared them online a year later.
Andrews filed a $75 million lawsuit against the stalker, Michael David Barett, as well as the owner and manager of the Marriott Vanderbilt in Nashville, one of the hotels where she was recorded without her knowledge.
"Probably for three months, everybody thought it was a publicity stunt," Andrews said while testifying. "That ripped me apart."
The 37-year-old sportscaster accused the hotel of giving Barett access to the room adjacent to her, without which he would not have been able to shoot her nude videos through a peephole. However, the hotel has refuted her claims.
"This could have been stopped," she said. "The Nashville Marriott could have just called me and said, 'We're putting this man that requested to be next to you, is this OK?' and I would have called the cops and we would have gotten him. It could have stopped this."
"All I wanted to do is be respected, be the girl who loves sports, and now I'm the girl with the scandal. It's embarrassing," she said with tears in her eyes. "It was everywhere...My naked body was on the front page of the New York Post."
Barrett pleaded guilty to stalking and videotaping the former ESPN reporter undressing through a peephole at hotels in Nashville and Columbus, Ohio, and was sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison.
During her emotional testimony, Andrews also recalled the time she found out that her nude videos had been leaked on the internet.
"I grabbed my laptop and flipped it open," she said, after being notified about the videos by a friend. "I saw it for two seconds and I was like, 'Oh my God!' and I shut it down and said, 'I have to call you back,' and I called my parents. I was just screaming that I was naked all over the Internet, and I didn't know what it was."
Andrews described how her screaming and yelling alerted the staff of the hotel she was staying in and also received a call from them to make sure everything was alright.
"I just remember crying, and I remember trying to get all of my stuff," she continued. "I got to the airport and standing in the TSA line and just bawling, and I could not believe this was happening. I remember thinking this was just going to blow up and go viral and get really bad."
"I just kept saying, 'We gotta get it down. We gotta get it down.' And we can't get it down! And we're never going to get it off," she said about the video, which has been seen by nearly 17 million people.
"I wanted to be the girl next door who loved sports, and now I'm the girl with a hotel scandal," Andrews added.
Watch her full testimony below:
