Female reporter was molested while broadcasting live

A reporter was molested by young men while filming a street festival in Cologne.

According to The Guardian, Esmeralda Labye, a reporter for Belgium's RTBF, was reporting live on camera when she was approached by two or three men. Labye wrote on the station's website that the "vile and cowardly" men tried to get her attention, with one of them kissing her on the neck.

Esmeralda Labye was molested by the young man behind her. Photo:CNN

"I was concentrating on presenting when I felt someone kissing my neck," she wrote. "Almost immediately, a young German man sang in my ear: 'Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir' (literally translated as 'Do you want to sleep with me tonight?' - a famous line from the song Lady Marmalade). "Then I felt two hands on my shoulders, and I saw the person behind me making an obscene gesture that should never have been on camera," she said.

Labye tried to ignore the men, but one of them groped her. "One of the three touched my breast. I lost my temper. At that point, I had just finished reporting, so I turned back and said to them in English, 'Don't touch me!'. The three of them didn't seem to understand why I was angry, but they left without saying another word."

Police in Cologne, a western German city, said yesterday that they received twice as many sexual assault complaints on the first day of this year's street festival as usual.

Police spokeswoman Dorothee Goebel said the increase could be due to increased public awareness of sexual assault, following the New Year's Eve outrage when migrants groped women in front of Cologne's main train station.

According to Vnexpress