Matt Lauer accuser shares graphic details of alleged rape that left her ‘caked with blood’

Brooke Nevils is sharing new, graphic details about the alleged sexual misconduct she suffered from Matt Lauer.

The former Today show talent assistant is opening up in her memoir, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe (available Feb. 3), about her experiences with the disgraced, former Today show anchor. Lauer was fired in 2017 after she reported his alleged sexual assault that took place during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

In an excerpt from the book published by The Cut on Wednesday, Nevils describes the events leading up to the first alleged rape, writing she was having a drink with Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira before Lauer joined. Nevils claims she went to his hotel room later, and was “drunk and alone with Matt Lauer insisting on having anal sex.”

In a 2019 letter to Variety, Lauer denied raping Nevils, claiming their relationship was an “extramarital affair” that was “completely consensual,” but said in another statement that “there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.”

Nevils claims in her book that she woke up the next morning and saw her “underwear and the sheet beneath me caked with blood.” She says the pain was “undeniable,” adding that “it hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to remember.”

However, it took her a long time to think of the alleged encounter as rape, as she attempted to justify the situation to herself.

“I would never have used the word ‘rape’ to describe what had happened,” she writes. “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 … One strikingly clear thought crossed my mind and then was instantly struck from my consciousness: If anyone else had done this to me, I would have gone to the police.”

Nevils says she felt alone at the time, since she was in Russia for work and didn’t trust that NBC would believe her word over Lauer’s. She was also afraid to call or message her family or friends to discuss what had allegedly happened, since, according to Nevils, NBC was monitoring their phones at the time for security reasons.

Since “ignoring the talent was not an option, and if he needed reassurance, I would reassure him,” Nevils writes, she agreed to come over when Lauer allegedly invited her to his apartment after they returned to New York from Russia. She also claims that she had attempted to discuss what allegedly happened several times over email, which she claims Lauer ignored.

“The look on his face was pleased, flattered, almost boyish,” Nevils recalls. “To him, apparently, those emails had been a proposition. Another opportunity. I was just relieved he wasn’t mad.”

Nevils claims that Lauer was “carrying an armful of towels” to prepare for another sexual encounter.

“Just in case, he says generously, because of what happened last time. The implications of this radiate through me,” she writes. “‘What happened last time’ could only have been the blood. He saw it in Sochi. He has known about it all along. It was not a mistake. It was not a misunderstanding. And then afterward — after he’d seen the blood — he’d asked me if I liked it, and I’d been so broken and humiliated and desperate to please him that I’d said ‘yes.’ But that was then. Why would he have towels now?”

Nevils claims that she asked Lauer that night why he preferred anal sex, and he said, “I like it because it’s transgressive.” According to Nevils, there were “four more instances of alleged ‘inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace,’ as NBC News later characterized it.” She also claims there was “one encounter I even initiated … thinking that this would be the time I took back control. But I never did. I just implicated myself in my own abuse.”

As for why she continued having sexual encounters with Lauer, which is a “question I have been asked too many times to count, including by Matt himself,” she said it was her “preexisting relationship” at NBC as a Page and later as a Today producer that made her “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,” Nevils writes, adding that her friends warned her to “get out” of NBC whenever she told them about it. “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. The abuse is a known quantity that the victim has already survived, but the consequences of confronting or reporting the abuser are unknowable and therefore much more terrifying.”

She added that “it would take years — and a national reckoning with sexual harassment and assault — before I called what happened to me assault.”

When she learned that “at least two teams of reporters from two different publications, Variety and the Times,” were looking into Lauer, she ultimately decided to file her complaint believing it would remain confidential. Lauer was questioned the next day, and fired by NBC News chairman Andrew Lack later that night amid “a slew of other allegations against Matt” published by Variety and the Times. Nevils took a leave of absence from NBC that would “ultimately prove permanent” as she struggled in the aftermath, and checked into a “psych ward” for mental health treatment.

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In response to the rape allegations, NBC said in a statement: “Matt Lauer’s conduct was appalling, horrific and reprehensible, as we said at the time. That’s why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. Our hearts break again for our colleague.”

Several other women came forward with allegations against Lauer, and his wife of 19 years, Annette Roque filed for divorce. They share three children. Lauer has not been charged with any crime.

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