'BE WOKE': Runner pleads guilty to sexual battery, handed probation for 'violating' female reporter with BUTT SLAP (VIDEO)

A married father-of-two and youth minister has pleaded guilty to sexual battery and been sentenced to a year's probation for “violating” a female reporter by slapping her behind live on TV during a race.

Alex Bozarjian was broadcasting live from the Enmarket Savannah Bridge Run in Georgia when Thomas Callaway, a boy scout leader, left her stunned as he was caught on camera smacking her backside as he ran past.

The 44-year-old has now been put on probation for the next year after pleading guilty to sexual battery, earning 200 hours of community service and being ordered to pay more than $1,000 in fines and fees as part of his punishment for the move on the WSAV-TV journalist.

"I touched her back," Callaway claimed afterwards in an interview with CBS, in which he called the incident "a misjudge in character and decision making."

"I did not know exactly where I touched her. I did not see her facial reaction because I kept on running. If I had, I would have been ashamed and I would have stopped, turned around and gone back and apologized to her."

Race organizers the Savannah Sports Council event swiftly slapped a lifetime ban from the event on Callaway.

"I think what it really comes down to is that he helped himself to a part of my body," Bozarjian told the channel. "He took my power and I'm trying to take that back."

In a statement addressing Callaway directly, she added: "You violated, objectified and embarrassed me. No woman should ever have to put up with this, at work or anywhere. Do better."

When Bozarjian's words were put to him, Callaway said he "totally agreed, 100 percent. The two most important words were her last two words: do better," he pointed out. "That's my intention."

Callaway did not offer an immediate response to media requests for comment following the ruling.

Writing about her ordeal on Instagram under the hashtags "women empowering women" and "femicide awareness", Bozarjian posted a photo of herself on the bridge minutes before the slap, which she said had "flipped-turned upside down" her life.

"What happened to me is only a fraction of the male toxicity in current day society," she argued. "Be woke."

"[The incident] made me question my career and brought a lot of monsters out from under my bed. Thousands of people threw in their two cents about how I should feel, how I should act and why I deserved it.

"Some days at work, I show up to do my job and, no matter how good I am at it, this one incident just seems to overshadow it. There are days where I feel like I'll never live it down. But you know what, folks? I stopped listening to the trolls.

"I let them purge their negativity in my comments and I don’t bat a damn eye. I don’t care if they like me or agree with me because they don’t pay my bills. They aren’t living in this body and they have no bearings on my life. [I enjoy] being my own version of a woman, not anyone else’s."