A former NBC employee whose complaint against Matt Lauer led to his firing in 2017, is sharing harrowing new details of what she describes as a violent sexual assault during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
The excerpt from Brooke Nevils’ upcoming memoir, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, was published by The Cut on January 28.
Nevils writes about waking up in a hotel room after a night with the longtime Today show anchor – and she was in pain. Her first thought, she wrote, was that “this must have been a misunderstanding. It was the only acceptable conclusion I could reach without my whole life falling apart.”
Nevils, now married with two children, says she has spent years trying to make sense of what happened and rebuilding her life after what she later came to understand as sexual assault.
“I have spent the long years since using my otherwise abandoned skills as a journalist to report and write the book about sexual harassment and assault that I wish had existed for me,” she wrote. “In the process, I have painstakingly rebuilt my life.”
The book, set to be released on February 3, includes Nevils’ recollection of that night in Sochi when Nevils, then an NBC talent assistant, went out for drinks with her boss Meredith Vieira and Lauer, and what happened when she later accompanied Lauer to his hotel room.
Nevils writes in the excerpt that “despite the rounds of vodka shots, the overwhelming power differential,” she “would never have used the word ‘rape’ to describe what had happened.”
“Back then, I had no idea what to call what happened other than weird and humiliating. But then there was the pain, which was undeniable. It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to remember.”
One thought briefly crossed her mind, she wrote: “If anyone else had done this to me, I would have gone to the police.”
But Lauer was not “anyone else.” At the time, he was Today’s longest-serving anchor, earning a reported $25 million a year and surrounded by NBC employees whose careers depended on him, Nevils wrote.
Nevils says she tried to convince herself the encounter in Sochi had been a misunderstanding, she continued communicating with Lauer after returning to New York – even visiting him at his apartment, a decision she examines with painful clarity in her memoir.
After much back and forth with herself, in November 2017, Nevils filed a formal complaint with NBC. Lauer was questioned the next day and fired that night by NBC News chairman Andrew Lack. Multiple other women later came forward with allegations against him.
Some of the allegations, from Nevils and other women, were published in 2019 in Ronan Farrow‘s book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.
Lauer denied Nevils’ allegations of rape, saying in a statement to Variety that he had an “extramarital affair” with her, but that their relationship was “completely consensual.”
The Independent has reached out to Lauer for comment.
Nevils also confronts in her book the fact that she continued to contact Lauer.
“Why, if an alleged victim was really sexually assaulted, would they continue a relationship with the perpetrator? Why would they go back?” she wrote.
But for Nevils, “it would take years – and a national reckoning with sexual harassment and assault – before I called what happened to me assault.”
After struggling for months, and then learning that “at least two teams of reporters from two different publications, Variety and the Times,” were looking into Lauer, she knew it was a “matter of time.” But Nevils said she was at a loss forres what to do.
“I was no Ashley Judd or Gretchen Carlson. I was just one woman and nobody’s ideal victim. I’d done everything wrong, and if it had taken five women coming forward with allegations against Mark Halperin, at least six for Bill O’Reilly, at least seven for Roger Ailes, how many women would have to come forward about Matt Lauer before any would be believed?” she wrote.
Then In November 2017, Nevils filed a formal complaint with NBC. Lauer was questioned the next day and fired that night by NBC News chairman Andrew Lack. Multiple other women later came forward with allegations against him.
After Lauer’s firing, Nevils says her life unraveled. She took a leave of absence from NBC that became permanent and struggled with drinking, paranoia, and shame.
“I barely recognized the train wreck I’d become,” she wrote. “Soon I would find myself in a psych ward, believing myself so worthless and damaged that the world would be better off without me.”
Today, Nevils says she has found healing through family and writing. She hopes her book will help someone who may be in a similar situation – something she says she did not have at the time.
“I know what it is to feel truly alone and ashamed, living a life that seems irredeemable, believing yourself to be worthless and unlovable,” she wrote. “Not one of these things – for any one of us – is ever true.”
