Authorities in Madrid arrested a man this week after he touched a reporter’s buttocks while she was in the middle of a live broadcast, police said.
Isa Balado was reporting on a robbery in Madrid for the channel Cuatro on Tuesday when a man approached her from behind and touched her rear end, video of the incident showed.
In two social media posts, Spain’s Policía Nacional confirmed an arrest.
Police posted a short video Tuesday on X, formerly known as Twitter, of two officers escorting a man who was handcuffed. The post said in Spanish: “detained for sexually assaulting a reporter while she was doing a live television show.”
On their Facebook page, police displayed a photo of Balado and the suspect, along with a link to the man’s arrest video and video of the reporter being assaulted during the broadcast.
In a caption for the Facebook post, police said the man was detained minutes after he sexually assaulted the reporter while she was on a live broadcast.
In the video of the incident, the man asks Balado which television channel she worked for after having groped her.
Balado told the man she was on a live broadcast and tried to continue working, but host Nacho Abad insisted that she put him in front of the camera. She did so and confronted him, telling him she was on the job.
Video of the incident also shows the man disputed that he touched the reporter’s back side, but Balado told him he did. As he walked away, the man touched Balado’s head, video shows.
Mediaset España, which owns Cuatro, said it “categorically repudiates any form of harassment or aggression. We fully support Isa Balado, reporter for ‘En boca de todos’, after the absolutely intolerable situation she has suffered today.”
The incident drew condemnation from national political figures, with Labor Minister Yolanda Díaz blaming it on a culture of “machismo,” or aggressive masculinity.
“It is machismo that makes journalists suffer sexual assaults like this, and the aggressors are unrepentant in front of the camera,” she wrote on X.
Equality Minister Irene Montero said on X she supported Balado, adding, “Non-consensual touching is sexual violence and we say enough to impunity.”
The furor comes in the wake of Spain’s World Cup kissing scandal, in which Spanish soccer federation President Luis Rubiales gave a nonconsensual kiss to player Jenni Hermoso after her team won the championship last month. The scandal led Rubiales to resign amid an assault investigation and triggered a national debate over sexism and inequity in Spain.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
