'I warned him' - Kamahl Santamaria's former co-host tells of years of harassment

Friday, 17 June 2022

• Ex-Breakfast host Kamahl Santamaria breaks his silence on allegations he sexually harassed colleagues.

• A former co-host at Al Jazeera English says Santamaria made sexual comments and gave her inappropriate 'hugs' over a number of years.

• Santamaria rejects the allegations, saying the pair were simply 'very good friends'.

• Text messages show his colleague, Leah Harding warned he 'would be Metoo-d' in New Zealand, just days before he departed for Auckland.

Days before he left the Al Jazeera news network in Qatar for a new life hosting TVNZ's Breakfast, Kamahl Santamaria sent a final text to his former co-anchor.

'That's what she said,' the text read - a reference to the sexually-themed ‘joke’ flogged time and again by actor Steve Carell's character Michael Scott, in the US version of The Office.

Immediately afterwards, another text: 'I've got to stop this'.

After six years working alongside Santamaria, US-born Al Jazeera news presenter Leah Harding​ says she was well used to his constant innuendo. But she had begun to push back.

**READ MORE:

* TVNZ finalises terms for review in wake of Kamahl Santamaria resignation

* TVNZ's spectacular own goal - and what should happen next

* Kamahl Santamaria's Breakfast resignation: What happened and why does it matter?

**

'I said 'this will [100 emoji] be a problem in NZ. It will get screen-shotted and posted, and you will be MeToo-d.''

'Ergh,' Santamaria replied.

Santamaria broke weeks of silence on Saturday to tell Stuff that he and Harding were “very good friends” for six years and that friendship extended 'right up until the end of my time at Al Jazeera'.

'My friendship with Leah was characterised by a lot of fun, banter, and joking, but all based on longstanding familiarity,” Santamaria said. “It was not one-sided.”

Former colleagues speak out

Harding and her Al Jazeera colleagues read of Santamaria's resignation from TVNZ, framed by the broadcaster in public statements as a 'family emergency'. TVNZ CEO Simon Power was forced to apologise to staff for that description after Stuff reported harassment claims against Santamaria.

Speaking from her home in Doha, Harding tells Stuff the 'family emergency' statement from TVNZ was one of the triggers that led to her decision to take her story public.

'When the news broke that he was ‘missing’ from his new show in New Zealand, I told some friends that I thought he had been caught. But I wasn't convinced. It hadn’t even been a month.

'Assuming there may actually be a ‘family emergency’ I texted him to see if he was OK. I told him I was there for him. He received the text but didn’t respond.'

Harding says TVNZ's framing was misleading and disrespectful to those he [allegedly] harassed.

'It let him off the hook and allowed him to leave peacefully. It made him look like a victim,” she says.

And Harding is clear on this point - Santamaria is no victim. The man she says was her mentor - who gave her presenting tips and pressed for her to be included in major news specials - was carefully calculated in his behaviour towards her and others.

'Our collective knowledge of Kamahl's sexual harassment has only been scratched at the surface,' she says.

“The number of texts I have received from [people] with their own stories has been staggering. My experience was not an isolated incident - it was his routine.”

Harding says she has 'years of content' in text messages from Santamaria. Stuff has viewed some of those messages, which show he regularly sexualised his co-host as they worked together on one of Al Jazeera's flagship programmes.

'Honestly LeLe.. And I think we're close enough for me to say this .. you look sexy as heck .. well it's definitely professional boss.. Which, certainly for me, is f…… sexy [heart eye emoji]' one of the messages reads.

'You're a babe.'

'When I see you next be ready for a super long hug. I mean really awkwardly long. I'm gonna make it so weird. I miss you so much,' he says in another.

'It’s easy to look back now and see the signs,” says Harding, “but in the thick of it everything was blurry. There was not a system in place to protect me from people like Kamahl, and Kamahl knew that.'

Santamaria breaks silence

Santamaria said he was unable to comment about allegations of inappropriate behaviour at TVNZ and Al Jazeera 'for legal reasons'.

He said the text messages showed only one side of a conversation between friends, and commenting on outfits or 'super-long awkward hugs” was part of their everyday chat.

'As good friends, we would share personal and intimate stories, and I never believed Leah found them to be offensive. There was one intimate story I told her which she would actually reference and joke about herself on occasions, apropos of nothing.'

He did not answer specific questions about whether Harding had told him his comments made her uncomfortable, instead sending a video of Harding making a short speech at his farewell in which she spoke of how she would miss him as a colleague.

He asked for a transcript of the video and of some of Harding's social media posts to be included in his response.

Santamaria denied the existence of any power imbalance between the two.

'There is, however, an assumption in these allegations, and in previous ones, that I as a news presenter at Al Jazeera had a lot of power and influence. That may be the case in other newsrooms, but at Al Jazeera English this is categorically not the case,' he said in a statement to Stuff.

'On-air presenters are effectively treated as an autocue reader, regardless of experience, ability, etc. I would have absolutely no input/influence over anyone’s career prospects.'

The Network Star

Originally from Florida, Harding grew up in the Middle East, moving between Jordan and Ethiopia with her parents as they carried out international aid work for a Christian organisation. She learned to speak Arabic from an early age, and from childhood, she had a single goal for her future career - to work as a journalist at Al Jazeera.

As Harding started high school in 2006, Al Jazeera International (later re-named Al Jazeera English) was launched. At the University of Florida Gainesville​, Harding took journalism courses, minoring in Arabic, and making it her goal to find connections with the station.

A meeting with an Al Jazeera employee led to an offer. Using savings from her part-time job, Harding flew to Doha, staying with family friends as she started an unpaid internship. It was the summer of 2014, and she was 23.

Kamahl Santamaria, already a network star, was one of the first people she met.

'When we first talked I remember feeling special that he already knew my name. He was the most charismatic presenter in the network and really did know everyone. He was a family man and people seemed to feel comfortable around him,' she remembers.

Harding's rise at Al Jazeera was meteoric by anyone's standards - from unpaid intern to full-time journalist within a year, and a hosting role on a new programme the year after that. Her co-host on AJNewsGrid​, was Santamaria.

'It was my dream job,' Harding says.

'I was presenting on the network I had always wanted to work for. We got to cover stories that the US didn't care about, like [the civil war in] Yemen.'

The show was a hit with Al Jazeera's online viewers, Harding says, many of whom tuned in for the banter between her and Santamaria.

'It was the Kamahl and Leah show. He would throw to my segments and it would be like he really knew me; it got to the point where people would write to me on Instagram and say, can you give us more from behind the scenes? Almost more than the stories, people loved seeing our interactions.'

At the beginning, Harding says Santamaria would compliment her on her talent.

'Then slowly, he started slipping inappropriate comments into our conversations. I would laugh, try to change the topic, or deflect. I'd hope I misheard him, or was making a bigger deal of it in my head.'

The show gained traction - in 2018 it was nominated for an Emmy award for its coverage of the Qatar diplomatic crisis.

Harding says Santamaria would praise her work and give her tips as her confidence as a young journalist grew. But as his comments became more frequent, they changed, she says - he would talk about his own sex life, her body, and other female colleagues’ bodies.

'He would make comments when I was at my computer, in hair and makeup, and during rehearsals. It was subtle and relentless. He felt comfortable around me and would almost always begin or follow up an inappropriate comment by saying ‘you're the only one I can say this to’.

'Ironically, I confided in him multiple times when other … colleagues made me feel uncomfortable. He told me one of them was ‘a creeper’ He seemed to empathise and listen well. He knew the right things to say to me, and it helped me trust him more.'

Many of Santamaria's comments were sent via text message - and Harding says this was preferable to her face-to-face interactions.

'I did prefer the comments in a text because it meant I wasn't with him [at the time]. At least they were just in my phone, and he wouldn't reach out and touch my arm when he said them.'

She also felt uneasy about getting Santamaria into trouble; was one comment here and there enough to make a scene?

'Psychologically I was under his spell, in a way. I definitely wanted to protect him and that's why this is so confusing.'

No path to complain

The Al Jazeera English network broadcasts from studio 14 - an award-winning space in a sleek, futuristic building hailed as a 'landmark structure' at its opening in 2016​. The campus is described on Al Jazeera's website as 'an island of professional journalism in a part of the world where professional journalism is traditionally not prevalent.' To Harding, it was a news paradise; the 'United Nations' of newsgathering.

'If you had a question about, say, Cameroon, you'd find someone in the newsroom who had lived there or who was born there, and they'd help you.'

But help for thorny employment issues, including harassment, was less easy to access. The network's Human Resources department sits in a separate building, nicknamed ‘Administan’ - a 300-metre trudge across a baking hot car park, and 'to be avoided at all costs' according to one former worker.

In the newsroom, a flat management structure consisting of executive producers, a head of output and at the top, its director of news, meant complaints often stalled at middle management level.

There was no training given on how to receive sensitive disclosures from workers.

'If you think about it, who do you approach?' the former staffer, who Stuff has agreed not to name, asks. 'Some colleagues take information on, and then just don't know what to do with that information.

'I wouldn't say management turned a blind eye. I'd say, they had no experience of handling these issues. You have to remember this is a young country with very young institutions.'

As Stuff reported in May, it's understood that Director of News Salah Negm​ did intervene at least once when Santamaria allegedly harassed a female colleague, giving him a warning.

Al Jazeera English Managing Director Giles Trendle​ did not respond to questions from Stuff this week, including whether Al Jazeera was reviewing Santamaria's conduct during his 16 years at the network.

Harding says there was no way she could have complained without putting her dream job in jeopardy. There were no anonymous reporting mechanisms available, she claims - and reporting to her superiors was not an option.

'I was worried my story could be used against me, lead to me getting taken off my show, or somehow be blamed for it being my fault in a country with a legal system different to my own.'

And in Harding's mind, the greatest consequence would have come from Santamaria himself.

'If I gave any of my examples he would know it was me. It felt like, if I complained, it would be obvious it was me and then work would be even more difficult.'

She says the only decision left was to manage it on her own - a common choice among harassment victims who fear retaliation or damage to income or career prospects, international research shows.

'I've lived in the Middle East for more than a decade as an unmarried woman, I've travelled to more than 60 countries, and I am not naive to how women can be treated and viewed,' Harding says. She has other examples, even within Al Jazeera; on one occasion her then line manager asked her on a ‘dinner date’ to discuss a request for paid leave. She declined.

'Sometimes the only way to cope with sexual harassment is to brush it off and pick your battles. If I fought every case I would have no time to live, and I would go mad.'

Al Jazeera sources say at least one female employee told management about allegations against Santamaria in an exit interview in 2016. Harding has also since heard about that interview, and notes it took place in the same year she was paired with the Kiwi on AJNewsGrid.

'I am heartbroken that my younger self shouldered so much, and I grieve with her now. But it wasn’t her fault. This isn’t my fault', Harding says.

As the years passed, Harding began to push back. She told friends and family about Santamaria's behaviour, asking for advice.

'It was then that I started to confront Kamahl. When he would make a comment about my breasts, or ask to hug me, I would tell him 'that makes me feel uncomfortable' or 'why don't you tell your wife that?'

'He would say 'oh LeLe you know I'm not trying to be weird, it's just true. It's hard for me to keep that to myself because it's how I really feel'. I would tell him, 'you should get therapy.'

'[Then] I would look around and see if someone else had heard him say these things. Did others notice that strange hug he just gave me? Do people think I wanted him to kiss me on the cheek like that?'

Harding says one boundary she could set was how often she saw her co-host.

'I made it a rule early on not to meet with him outside of work, unless it was a public place or with others - I knew his wife and wanted to be respectful of her. He asked me to go to coffee many times, but I always made an excuse to get out of it.

'It also helped that he rarely socialised outside the newsroom. In total, I saw him outside of work four times, over the span of eight years.'

Santamaria was 'big on gifts', Harding says, once giving her a keychain bearing the words 'I will seduce you with my awkwardness'.

'The keychain was a reference to an in-joke about HER awkwardness, not any seduction by anyone,' Santamaria contends.

Stuff has also viewed a letter Santamaria wrote to Harding's parents after being introduced to them in the newsroom. In it, he calls Harding '.. the girlfriend I never had - but always wanted.'

Harding says she photographed the letter before throwing it out. 'Strangely, I documented everything he gave me. It's like even then, years ago, I knew I'd want evidence and details later.'

'The letter to her parents was private correspondence,' Santamaria told Stuff.

'They had wanted to meet me for coffee when they were in Doha, but I didn’t have the time, so I wrote them a letter praising Leah and the way they had brought her up. It also included references to her being ‘the little sister I never had’ and ‘the colleague I always wanted’. As it happens, I did end up meeting them in person when they visited the newsroom in Doha, and her mother later sent me a note of thanks in return.'

After almost a decade at Al Jazeera, Harding's bona fides as an international broadcast journalist are beyond question - she has reported on international affairs on four continents and was the first person to ‘go live’ from Ethiopia during that country's coup attempt in 2019. And she admits Kamahl Santamaria helped her career.

'He … genuinely did make me a better presenter and journalist. No one was as talented as Kamahl. He would back me in meetings and ask our bosses to place me with him on news specials. The part that confuses me the most, is that overall I did enjoy working with him. He was mostly good. He kept me close.'

But his 'back-handed comments' also made her feel shame and confusion, she says.

'How could someone I enjoyed working with continue to say things about my body and love life and family?”

Harding is well aware that speaking about her experiences at Al Jazeera may carry a risk for her - but has made a clear decision to throw off the fear that has kept her silent for too long.

'I wish I had the courage to shout my complaints from the rooftops to avoid another soul being harmed by him. But it’s not about what I didn’t do, it’s about what he did.

'I do not need to be afraid of the consequences of speaking out, even though there could be consequences. Survivors are blamed for the work of the perpetrator far too often.

“If this affects my future employment or how I am seen, then so be it.'