Fox’s Erin Andrews’ $75 million lawsuit against the Nashville Marriott, which is over stalker Michael David Barrett’s 2008 video of her undressing, has featured substantial testimony on the video’s impact on her this week. Her father, Steve, spoke on that front Wednesday, and therapist Loren Comstock, who treated her from March 2012 to April 2013, spoke Thursday. The video’s reach and ongoing impact on Andrews was also illustrated Thursday by the testimony of a computer expert:
A computer expert testified on Thursday that nearly 17 million individuals have viewed the nude video of Andrews, a recording that occurred at the Nashville Marriott in 2008 through a rigged peephole by stalker Michael David Barrett.
“Every minute, 1.5 people are watching that video,” Penn State Professor Bernard Jansen told jurors in Nashville court. “Right now, someone is watching that video.”
That four-and-a-half-minute video shot at the Nashville Mariott has reportedly been viewed over 300 million times, and it and another short video Barrett made at a Columbus, Ohio hotel have heavily affected Andrews. Steve Andrews testified Wednesday that she vomited before reluctantly agreeing to watch the videos with the FBI to help identify who took them, and she tearfully left the courtroom before they were shown to the jury Thursday. Comstock testified Thursday about the substantial personal impact on Andrews and how she worried the videos would harm her career:
She told me that she had aspired to be a sportscaster from the time she was a little girl and that she had worked hard to establish herself, and that she was concerned that this incident made a mockery of her and it would impact people being able to take her seriously,” the therapist said.
Comstock described Andrews as obsessed, saying she checked the Internet every day to see what was being said about her. Andrews, the therapist said, did not want to be defined by the videos.
Thursday also saw testimony from Marriott International’s Renne Buonicontri, who said Barrett obtained the room next to Andrews in Nashville through a request through the company’s 1-800 number, and that information wasn’t passed on to the Nashville Marriott. The trial is expected to last another week.
