Man who groped World Cup reporter speaks out

The man who groped a female reporter live on camera at the World Cup has reached out to apologise for his behaviour.

Colombian reporter Julieth Gonzalez Theran was on assignment in Saransk, Russia last week, working for the Spanish-language arm of German TV outlet Deutsche Welle.

She was on the air doing a live shot in a city square when a bearded man wearing a backward baseball cap burst into the frame, grabbed her breast and roughly planted a kiss on her cheek.

Now the man in the video reached out to the station Theran was working for to apologize for his behavior.

In a Skype call with the station, the man who identified himself as “Ruslan,” without giving a last name, claimed the incident had been “misinterpreted.”

He offered the reporter “the most profound apologies,” adding that he hoped she “will never face another such incident in [her] career.”

He claimed his assault on Theran was the result of a bet he’d made with his friends that he could kiss a reporter live on the air.

“I thought I put my hands on her shoulders, but apparently I missed a little and touched her chest with my left hand,” he told DW. “I would not have believed it myself, but looking at the video I realized that it looked ambiguous from the side.”

Alex Baker – FC Yahoo