Lewd email and kiss attempts of ex-TVNZ host Kamahl Santamaria revealed
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Loading... - Reeta Korhonen
- 31 May 2022
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A lewd email sent by ex-TVNZ host Kamahl Santamaria during his employment at Al Jazeera has been uncovered by Stuff.
The email, subject-lined “At the risk of embarrassing you…” was sent by Santamaria to a young, female, then-colleague in the Doha office of the respected global TV network.
In the document, Santamaria, who quit TVNZ after just 32 days under a cloud last week, openly objectifies the appearance of the recipient, and, a second Al Jazeera colleague.
The email reads: “.. there is no more attractive outfit on a woman than the white blouse/black skirt combo...... and YOU are making it work, baby ;)
“(Between you and [name withheld], I may just combust!!)”
Santamaria signed off the email with three kisses “Xxx”.
Stuff has interviewed the recipient of the email, who also said Santamaria tried to kiss her - in the Al Jazeera newsroom - on at least two occasions.
Stuff has agreed to protect the woman’s identity.
“I remember being relatively new at Al Jazeera, it could have been six months,” she said.
“He started off just being a friendly, chatty colleague. A little bit forward, but nothing that I would have said was out of bounds.
“But then as we started to chat more, always in a work setting with people around, he started to become more friendly and then I remember one day, he came up to me to greet me, and he had hands on both my upper arms and he went straight to kiss me on the lips.
“The newsroom wasn’t empty, but it was very minimal.
“As he came to kiss me, I turned my cheek so he ended up kissing my cheek. I was so shocked I couldn’t even speak. He carried on talking but I just couldn’t tell you what he was saying and then he went back to the news desk to present [on television].
“I can’t remember the exact timeframe but it happened again. I feel like it was within a week.
“I remember it was darker, so it might have been hallway - this is all in the Al Jazeera newsroom - went to kiss me on the lips. I turned again.
“Imagine this going on in parallel to him sending me inappropriate text messages and emails.
“That was really common practice.”
She described a power imbalance with Santamaria as “really real”.
“I was relatively junior in the newsroom, he was a senior anchor, he carried a lot of weight. I was absolutely terrified,” she said.
The woman said she then resorted to hiding in the toilet to avoid Santamaria at work.
“It got to the point, I want to say this lasted over a month or couple of months, where I was hiding in the bathroom. I’d see him coming down the hallway, I’d run to the bathroom, would wait 10 minutes until I’d thought he’d passed and would come out again.
“This was impacting my ability to do my work seamlessly, my comfort level at work.”
She said the approaches and communications made her feel shame and were “absolutely terrifying”.
“I felt disgusting, I felt ashamed, I was mortified,” she said. “The fact that I was locking myself in a bathroom cubicle at work when I saw him coming, it was absolutely terrifying.”
After about “6-8 weeks” she reported Santamaria to a newsroom leader.
“I went to an EP [executive producer] who I really respect...they just said leave it with them,” she said.
“The next day I was back at work and that was it, he completely ignored me, he never approached me, if we were walking down the same corridor he would turn away. And that was for the rest of my time at Al Jazeera, I literally never had contact with him again.
“I don’t know what was said to him, I don’t know what was done. But clearly something happened because he just stopped talking to me and more broadly I thought, ‘OK, I don’t have to deal with this man hassling me anymore’.”
However, she said that still wasn’t the end for her - and she knows others who cite similar experiences.
“I know that other women experienced it,” she said.
“Other women, anecdotally, have said it’s the lewd emails, the text messages, the touching. Read More...
