Originally appeared on E! Online
Erin Andrews is giving a full report on what she experienced after learning she had been stalked and unknowingly videotaped while undressing inside a hotel room in 2008.
"People thought it was a scandal," the sportscaster recalled to Hoda Kotb in an interview on her Making Space podcast Nov. 20, "and I'm the square from high school. I don't do those things."
She added, "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.'"
However, Andrews's friend was adamant it was her in the footage. "I called my parents and my dad said he had thought I had been in a car accident," the journalist said through tears. "Because I was just screaming and I feel so bad because my parents were incredible."
Photos: Erin Andrews and Jarret Stoll’s Cutest Moments
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But the issue was far more than standard teenage drama. Back in 2008, Michael David Barrett followed Andrews to the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University while she was covering college sports and using the peephole of her door to shoot footage of her undressing. The Illinois-based insurance exec later admitted to purposely renting hotel rooms next to the sports anchor in three different cities, to capture video of her through the peepholes.
At the time, the judge sentenced Michael to 27 months in prison plus three years of supervised probation, $5,000 in fines and $7,366 in restitution.
He was later ordered to pay her $27 million in damages, but that's not the only thing Andrews took away from the traumatizing situation.
"It's proved to me how strong I am," she told Redbook in 2015. "I couldn't pretend like it wasn't a big deal. It was."
