In emotional plea, Erin Andrews blames hotel

Signs from fans in the stands said “Marry me, Erin Andrews. You’re hot,” Andrews told a Nashville jury on Monday.

She could handle it back then, she said, and even used comments about her appearance to fuel her career.

But a 4½-minute video secretly recorded of the television broadcaster nude at a Nashville hotel in 2008 shook that confidence, she said.

Now when the Fox Sports reporter is on the field, she has an earpiece in one ear and a never-ending stream of anxiety in the other.

“I’ve seen your this. I’ve seen your that,” she said tearfully from the witness stand, recalling the jeers she hears from the crowd. “Hey, I’ve seen what you do here.”

Andrews testified in the fifth day of her civil trial. She is seeking $75 million from Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt University, owned by West End Hotel Partners and operated by Windsor Capital Group.

The 37-year-old, who has attended each day of trial, spoke calmly at first. When asked by her lawyer, Bruce Broillet, if she knew more about sports than anyone in the courtroom, she responded lightheartedly: "That's speculation, isn't it?"

She looked at the jurors as she described her childhood as a tomboy. Her first big job covering the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team in her hometown in Florida. How she worked hard to be the girl next door who knew her stuff, not the tall blond stereotype on the sidelines.

Then her attorney asked her to talk about what happened on Sept. 4, 2008.

Andrews' composure broke. Her father and mother, Steve and Paula Andrews, sat in the front row. Paula Andrews sobbed into her husband's shoulder.

On that September day, as Andrews was preparing for a Thursday night Vanderbilt football game, a man she did not know requested a room next to her at the hotel and recorded her naked through an altered peephole. 

She tearfully described how, 11 months later, her friend and Sports Illustrated writer Jimmy Traina told her the videos had been posted online. How she vomited when she watched the video as part of an FBI investigation. How for the next month she felt "glazed over," wore pajamas all day and holed up at her parents' home. How she blamed herself for not wearing a bathrobe when she said she should have faulted the hotel.

“I’m so angry,” she said. “This could have been stopped.”

She said if she had known a man requested the room next to her, she would have called police. But Marriott hotel staff never notified her, she said.

Michael David Barrett, testifying via video deposition earlier Monday, said he fell on hard financial times and planned to follow Andrews only once. He chose Andrews on a whim because she was popular on the Internet, he said.

Andrews left the courtroom during Barrett’s video testimony.

Barrett said he followed Andrews to three hotels and would call to confirm a reservation in Andrews’ name as if it was his own.

Inside the Nashville Marriott he used a house phone with a digital display and asked to be transferred to Andrews’ room, he said. That’s how he found out her room number, he said, and then he requested to be next door. 

Barrett said in the recorded testimony that he did not know why he did it, and called posting the videos online a “huge, huge mistake in judgment.”

He knew it carried consequences for himself and Andrews.

His was prison: He pleaded guilty to federal stalking charges and in 2010 was sentenced to more than 2½ years in prison. 

Her consequences continue every day, according to her testimony.

“People tweet me,” she testified, summarizing those social media messages: “I should pay the Marriott because they made me famous. I should pay Barrett because he did me a favor.”

Previous trial testimony was that the videos or still images from them were seen by more than 16.8 million people. Andrews described how she had to convince the public, even the FBI, that the video was not a publicity stunt. 

To jurors’ rapt attention she described how media stories about the video humiliated and embarrassed her. How a picture of her naked with black bars across her body appeared on the front page of the New York Post. How she decided to file the civil lawsuit. 

“This trial has obviously brought everything back,” she said. “This is like it was the first week it happened. I knew it was going to happen.”

She said she believed what happened to her could happen to anyone. Barrett testified that he had filmed about 10 women at other hotels by altering peepholes as he had done to Andrews.

“I have to do what’s right,” Andrews said. “And I have to stand up for myself. And I have to stand up for everyone. This could have happened to anyone. I want the Nashville Marriott held responsible."

Reach Stacey Barchenger at 615-726-8968 and on Twitter @sbarchenger.