Matt Lauer's accuser details alleged assault and aftermath in new memoir
Trigger warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault.
Former NBC employee Brooke Nevils has opened up further about her allegations of sexual abuse against American news anchor Matt Lauer, revealing that the trauma led her to seek treatment in a psychiatric facility.
In an excerpt of her upcoming memoir, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, as published by The Cut, Nevils recalled the 2014 ordeal with Lauer, where she found her "underwear and the sheet beneath me caked with blood" on the morning after the first abuse.
Revisiting the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Nevils, then an NBC talent assistant, was celebrating her mentor, Meredith Vieira, at a hotel bar for her milestone solo-anchor coverage.
The night shifted when Lauer joined the group. Nevils later described the situation turning dark, stating she was "drunk and alone" with Lauer when he allegedly forced himself on her.
"Despite the rounds of vodka shots, the overwhelming power differential, and the bloody underwear and sheets, I would never have used the word 'rape' to describe what had happened," she wrote.
"Even now, I hear 'rape' and think of masked strangers in dark alleys. 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," she continued.
Nevil explained the one reason why she did not immediately report the alleged rape.
"I was in freaking Russia. Who would I call? Putin? The KGB? There was only NBC, and Matt Lauer was ‘Today’s’ longest-serving anchor with the biggest contract in the 60-year history of morning television, worth a reported $25 million a year. In the news business back then, his point of view was reality, and if you disagreed with it, you were wrong," she wrote.
Nevils tried to blame herself, saying, “I had given him the wrong idea, failed to be clear, failed to convince him, failed to stop him, failed to find a graceful way out of the situation without embarrassing him. I certainly should not have bled. The only thing to do was to smooth it over, and smoothing things over for the talent was my actual day job. That, at least, I knew how to do."
Nevils shared that she later received an email from Lauer that said something like, “You don’t call, you don’t write—my feelings are hurt! How are you?" She asked if they could talk about the incident, as she found herself unable to move past it.
The two eventually met at the Today office, with Lauer inviting her to his apartment that evening.
"I was there to block out a memory, to erase it, to replace it with one less humiliating. Matt’s objective, it seemed, was the opposite. His point, apparently, was to re‑create that memory. To reinforce it. To repeat it," Nevils said, claiming that it led to a sexual encounter.
The sexual encounters happened multiple times, with Lauer, at one point, "ducks out of the room and then returns, carrying an armful of towels," with his reason being "because of what happened last time."
"I went; two other times I ended up there in the course of my day-to-day job,” she wrote. “One encounter I even initiated, telling myself I wasn’t the same naïve idiot I’d been in Sochi or some girl Matt could just summon to her knees in his office, always thinking that this would be the time I took back control. But I never did. I just implicated myself in my own abuse.”
“Why, if an alleged victim was really sexually assaulted, would they continue a relationship with the perpetrator? Why would they go back? This is the question I have been asked too many times to count, including by Matt himself,” Nevils added.
"Assume that this happens as most sexual assaults actually do, within the context of a preexisting relationship. I will be much less likely to immediately recognize it as an assault. I have to consider not only whether anyone will believe me but how the allegation will impact everyone else in my life. If that means losing a job, a church, a school, or part of my family, then that’s all the more reason to convince myself that it wasn’t a sexual assault in the first place," she wrote.
Nevils formally filed a complaint against Lauer in 2017, which led to his firing. She later took a leave of absence and eventually exited the network.
Looking back, Nevils said the ordeal left her "compulsive, paranoid, and drinking constantly."
“I’d started at NBC giving studio tours, and it had taken nearly a decade to work my way up to salaried prime-time news producer. Now that life was gone, and I barely recognized the train wreck I’d become,” Nevils wrote.
“I was compulsive, paranoid, and drinking all the time. I felt I’d ruined everything, hurt and embarrassed everyone I loved. Soon I would find myself in a psych ward, believing myself so worthless and damaged that the world would be better off without me," she added.
After her complaint, several other women came forward with allegations of Lauer's misconduct.
For his part, Lauer denied Nevils' allegations, claiming that "everything was 'completely consensual.'"