Brooke Nevils, the previous NBC worker who accused Matt Lauer of sexual assault, is releasing a brand new ebook subsequent month titled “Excerpted from Unspeakable Issues” by which she goes into better element about her relationship to the previous “Today” anchor. Nevils first went public along with her story in Ronan Farrow’s 2019 book “Catch and Kill,” by which she accused Lauer of rape on the 2014 Sochi Olympics the place she was working with Meredith Vieira. Lauer has denied all of the allegations in opposition to him.
“Regardless of the rounds of vodka pictures, the overwhelming energy differential, and the bloody underwear and sheets, I might by no means have used the phrase ‘rape’ to explain what had occurred,” Nevils now writes in the book (by way of The Cut). “Even now, I hear ‘rape’ and consider masked strangers in darkish alleys. Again then, I had no thought what to name what occurred apart from bizarre and humiliating. However then there was the ache, which was plain. It damage to stroll. It damage to sit down. It damage to recollect. One strikingly clear thought crossed my thoughts after which was immediately struck from my consciousness: If anybody else had achieved this to me, I might have gone to the police.”
Nevils writes that one reason she didn’t instantly name the police to report the alleged rape is “as a result of I used to be in freaking Russia. Who would I name? Putin? The KGB? There was solely NBC, and Matt Lauer was ‘Immediately’s’ longest-serving anchor with the largest contract within the 60-year historical past of morning tv, value a reported $25 million a yr. Within the information enterprise again then, his perspective was actuality, and if you happen to disagreed with it, you had been incorrect.”
“The entire thing needed to have been my fault,” she continues. “I had given him the incorrect thought, didn’t be clear, didn’t persuade him, didn’t cease him, didn’t discover a swish approach out of the state of affairs with out embarrassing him. I actually mustn’t have bled. The one factor to do was to clean it over, and smoothing issues over for the expertise was my precise day job. That, at the least, I knew do.
Nevils remembers feeling “completely alone, drowning in plain sight” after the incident. She writes that Lauer emailed her after saying one thing alongside the traces of: “You don’t name, you don’t write — my emotions are damage! How are you?” After a couple of days, she emailed him again asking “if he had time for a fast chat” to debate the encounter. Nevils then despatched a second e-mail “actually begging him to name me.”
“I used to be crying uncontrollably, working my approach by means of vodka, after which at 10:30 or 11 — who even is aware of what time it was — I used my NBC burner cellphone to name Matt’s NBC burner cellphone,” Nevils writes. “He answered immediately. He’d clearly been sleeping. In tears, I mentioned I actually wanted to speak earlier than I left [Sochi] as a result of I didn’t know what to do. He appeared to don’t know what I used to be speaking about. Then he mentioned — as if he had been making an attempt to not wake all the best way up — ‘Come see me after we’re again in New York.’ Then he hung up.”
When the 2 lastly met in individual on the “Immediately” workplaces the next week, Nevils writes that Lauer was “all smiles” and “so sorry he hadn’t seen my emails.” He allegedly invited her to “come to his condo that night time. The look on his face was happy, flattered, virtually boyish. To him, apparently, these emails [I sent] had been a proposition. One other alternative. I used to be simply relieved he wasn’t mad.”
“After I arrived, he ushered me shortly by means of a palatial condo right into a kitchen, the place he supplied me a drink. It was vodka, handed to me with a smile,” Nevils writes. “I used to be there to dam out a reminiscence, to erase it, to interchange it with one much less humiliating. Matt’s goal, it appeared, was the alternative. His level, apparently, was to re‑create that reminiscence. To strengthen it. To repeat it. The disgrace flooded over me as I drank, realizing uncomfortably late that Matt was not consuming something in any respect however watching me intently, the best way a mum or dad administers medication to a baby.”
The night time ended with a sexual encounter, Nevils writes. Lauer allegedly introduced an “armful of towels” into his bed room, which she figured was in reference to the blood that prompted a multitude in the course of the Sochi incident after Lauer had allegedly pressured her to have anal intercourse. When she pushed again on having intercourse once more with Lauer, the “Immediately” host allegedly instructed her: “You mentioned you favored it in Sochi.” Nevils in the end gave in and had intercourse with Lauer that night time and writes that “within the months that adopted, there could be 4 extra cases” of comparable encounters.
“As soon as Matt summoned me to his dressing room and I went; two different instances I ended up there in the midst of my day-to-day job,” she writes. “One encounter I even initiated, telling myself I wasn’t the identical naïve fool I’d been in Sochi or some lady Matt may simply summon to her knees in his workplace, all the time pondering that this could be the time I took again management. However I by no means did. I simply implicated myself in my very own abuse.”
“Why, if an alleged sufferer was actually sexually assaulted, would they proceed a relationship with the perpetrator? Why would they return? That is the query I’ve been requested too many instances to depend, together with by Matt himself,” Nevils writes, referring to the open letter Lauer printed in 2019 by which he mentioned “Brooke’s story is stuffed with contradictions.”
“If I’m strolling house at night time and a person in a ski masks jumps out and sexually assaults me in an alley, clearly I’m not going to chase him down the road afterward and ask if he desires to go get a cup of espresso,” Nevils writes. “For the reason that assailant is a stranger, neither his opinion of me nor his relationship to me issues. He can’t value me a job or hurt my status. Nobody in my life will blame me for getting him in bother. However now assume that this occurs as most sexual assaults really do, inside the context of a preexisting relationship. I shall be a lot much less prone to instantly acknowledge it as an assault. I’ve to think about not solely whether or not anybody will consider me however how the allegation will affect everybody else in my life. If meaning shedding a job, a church, a faculty, or a part of my household, then that’s all of the extra motive to persuade myself that it wasn’t a sexual assault within the first place.”
Nevils remembers how Lauer “was completely good” in work settings throughout this time period and that “apart from once I was alone with him, he was not monstrous in any respect however charming and charismatic, powerfully wielding the expertise that every one nice interviewers have of creating you are feeling as if you’re the one individual on this planet,” which is one more reason his alleged conduct confused her and made it more durable to talk out.
Nevils filed a criticism to NBC in November 2017 accusing Lauer of sexual misconduct. He was fired inside 24 hours. After he misplaced his job, Selection published a story that detailed different allegations of misconduct by Lauer at Immediately. When Lauer initially responded to Nevils’ rape accusation with the open letter, he denied any wrongdoing however admited to having an extramarital affair with Nevils.
Selection has reached out to remark from Lauer’s consultant relating to Nevils’ new ebook.
Head over to The Cut’s website to learn Nevil’s full ebook excerpt. “Excerpted From Unspeakable Issues” publishes Feb. 3.
