Fox's Erin Andrews awarded $55m in peeping tom lawsuit

Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews has been awarded $55m (£38m) in her lawsuit against a stalker who had secretly recorded her naked in a hotel room.

An FBI investigation revealed that Michael David Barrett, from Westmont, Illinois, paid for a hotel room next to hers at the Nashville Marriott at Vanderbilt in 2008 and shot the four-and-a-half-minute video after tampering with her door's peephole.

Andrews, who also presents US television show Dancing with the Stars, said she had been humiliated and suffers from depression as a result of the video, which has been viewed by millions of people online.

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"This happens every day of my life," she told the court in Nashville. "Either I get a tweet or somebody makes a comment in the paper or somebody sends me a still video to my Twitter or someone screams it at me in the stands and I'm right back to this. I feel so embarrassed and I am so ashamed."

Last week, Judge Hamilton Gayden declared Barrett to be at fault and asked jurors to decide if the hotel owner, West End Hotel Partners, and the former operator, Windsor Capital Group, should share any responsibility. Marriott was not part of the trial as the hotel is a franchise.

Andrews wept as jurors announced that Barrett was responsible for 51 per cent of the verdict and the two hotel companies should share the rest, amounting to nearly $27m (£18.9m), reports Fox News.

The presenter thanked her supporters in a statement on Twitter, saying: "I've been honoured by all the support from victims around the world. Their outreach has helped me be able to stand up and hold accountable those whose job it is to protect everyone's safety, security and privacy."

Barrett pleaded guilty to stalking Andrews, altering hotel-room peepholes and taking nude videos of her. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and did not appear at the trial.

The hotels had argued Barrett was solely to blame, but admitted the case has changed the industry to make rooms more secure.