It's important to Ines Sainz that she isn't blamed for what happened three years ago Wednesday.
You probably remember the headlines. A
New York Jets assistant coach purposely overthrew balls in her direction on a practice field, to watch her jump. Later, half-dressed players in the Jets locker room catcalled her, yelling, "Chica bonita!" like teenage boys on a street corner.
Although the resulting flurry of unwanted attention was annoying to Sainz, the Spanish-language TV reporter stresses in a telephone interview from Azteca America offices in Mexico City that she was not offended by the players' behavior. The next day, in fact, Sainz walked into the NFL offices on Park Avenue and signed all the papers league investigators asked her to. She signed one that said she was telling the truth, and then wrote out her own her version of events, signing the bottom of that one, too.
"I spoke to many lawyers there, and I said explained that I didn't feel uncomfortable and I'm pretty sure it wasn't sexual harassment," Sainz said.
Sainz was wearing her work outfit of jeans and a white blouse to interview
Mark Sanchez that day, a uniform that suited her entertainment-focused network but didn't dovetail with American standards of business attire. Had she maintained that she was made to feel uncomfortable, as she initially tweeted in Spanish from the locker room, the backlash from elements of the fan base and the media might have been worse. Victim-blaming can be harsh, so it's understandable to try to avoid the victim's role altogether.
Other reporters, talking among themselves, quietly said they were uncomfortable -- particularly as nose tackle
Kris Jenkins roared, "This is our locker room!" to anyone who tried to dampen the hijinks. But Sainz is the one who found herself in the spotlight, and, despite her efforts, she found it hard to defend her professionalism in a culture with different rules and customs.
"When you are away from home and they don't know your work, it's very hard to defend your work," Sainz said. "I'm used to having my work speak for me. ... [People] think you're the kind of person who takes advantage of a situation and not a professional reporter. It was a very difficult experience for me."