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Brazilian reporter fights back after World Cup spectator tries to kiss her on-air

A Brazilian television reporter was sexually harassed during her World Cup broadcast. (Sport TV)
A Brazilian television reporter was sexually harassed during her World Cup broadcast. (Sport TV)

A female journalist reporting from the World Cup in Russia was sexually harassed by a spectator during a live broadcast for at least the third time in a week. This time she avoided his advances.

The latest victim of this rampant harassment is Julia Guimarães, a Brazilian TV journalist for Sport TV who was reporting from Sunday’s Senegal-Japan match in Yekaterinburg. With the quickness of a World Cup-caliber goaltender, she rejected an unidentified man trying to kiss her during the report.

“Don’t do this. Never do this again,” Guimarães said as the man apologized off-camera. “I never allow you to do this. Never, OK? This is not polite. This is not right. Never do this. Never do this to a woman.”

Together with Globo Esporte’s Amanda Kestelman, Guimarães had already written about what they described as “a hostile environment” for female journalists covering the World Cup in Russia. She told Globo that she also experienced sexual harassment prior to the Egypt-Uruguay game in Moscow.

“It’s difficult to find words,”Guimarães wrote on Twitter, via the New York Post’s transcription. “As luck would have it, I never lived through this in Brazil. Here, it has already happened twice. Sad! Shameful!”

Colombian reporter sexually harassed in Russia

Guimarães isn’t the only female journalist to experience this harassment on camera. Colombian reporter Julieth Gonzalez Theran was reporting for German news station Deutsche Welle last week when a World Cup spectator grabbed her by the breast and kissed her on the cheek. In a true feat of professionalism, Theran managed to conclude her report before searching for the perpetrator.

World Cup fans also harassed a Swedish journalist

Two days later, Swedish correspondent Malin Wahlberg was swarmed by a group of fans, some of whom tried to kiss her on the cheek, draped their arms around her and mussed her hair. She too somehow managed to continue reporting on the broadcast for Swedish TV station Sportbladet.

Guimarães, apparently, had seen enough, calling out her assailant — and for good reason.

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Ben Rohrbach is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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