Kamahl Santamaria finally acknowledges inappropriate touching complaint led to his TVNZ departure

Disgraced former TVNZ host Kamahl Santamaria has acknowledged for the first time that a complaint about him touching a colleague led to his dismissal from the state broadcaster.

The Emmy-nominated journalist, who had also been accused of sending a vulgar email to a female coworker while working at Al Jazeera, only spent 32 days working at TVNZ before being axed last year.

He was brought in as John Campbell’s replacement on the network’s Breakfast show.

TVNZ originally said it was a “family emergency” that led to his departure, before this narrative was debunked by the claims of Santamaria’s co-workers.

A year on from the scandal, Santamaria has dodged media questions, and announced in June he was starting a podcast and website named Balance to “set some records straight”.

However, he never admitted the behaviour he was being accused of, but apologised for the “effect he had on others”.

“What I failed to recognise was, particularly in a post-‘Me Too’ world, there is just no place for over-friendly, over-familiar, flirtatious, tactile behaviour or banter in the workplace, no matter how friendly that workplace is or how prevalent that behaviour might be,” he said in the promotion for his website.

“I’ve made mistakes, but I hope my past doesn’t define who I am in the future.”

But Santamaria has now finally acknowledged and admitted the accusations in an almost 4000-word statement on his website.

“I can clarify right now that one complaint was made against me at TVNZ,” the statement read.

“This involved an allegation of touching a colleague in the newsroom.”

He claimed the complainant never accused him of sexual or other harassment at the time.

He also claimed when the complaint was verbally raised in a meeting with a senior HR representative and TVNZ’s then-head of news and current affairs, he immediately remembered the exchange and said any touching was “instinctive action on my part, with no ill intent”.

Santamaria claimed he was “not aware of any power imbalance at the time” or that his colleague felt any discomfort.

“However, based on what I was being told at that time, I did accept that it had made my colleague feel uncomfortable, and I immediately apologised for that,” he wrote.

“I also completely acknowledge - then and now - that the colleague was absolutely correct to make a complaint if any actions had made them feel uncomfortable.

“However, there is always a context, and it happened in the newsroom environment, where expressiveness and tactility were commonplace,” he continued in his statement.