InRonan Farrow’s 2019 book,Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,Brooke Nevils, a former NBC News employee, alleged that formerTodayco-anchorMatt Lauerraped her in his hotel room at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Nevils described the incident in detail to Farrow and revealed that she reported the encounter to NBC afterward. In 2017, the networkfired Lauer for “inappropriate sexual behavior"from his position on theTodayshow.At the time, Nevils' identity was kept anonymous at her request. Farrow’s book was the first time the full details of her allegations were made public.
In 2019, Lauerdenied raping Nevilsin a lengthy letter toVariety, saying he had an “extramarital, but consensual, sexual encounter” with her.
According to an interview she conducted in 2010 with Johns Hopkins University’sArts & Sciences Magazinewhile she still worked at NBC, Nevils, a Missouri native, graduated from Johns Hopkins University in 2007 with a double major in political science and the Writing Seminars. After college, she began her career as a page for NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City.
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As a page, Nevil’s job was to greet the celebrity guests and get them to the set on time for their interview. Her most memorable day on the job, as she explained in her interview, came whenRobert De Niroarrived on set.
After making nonstop calls and tracking down countless cabs, Nevils managed to recover De Niro’s wallet.
Once her position as a page ended, Nevils moved on to a 10-month post as personal assistant to formerTodayco-hostMeredith Vieira. Her daily tasks were to fetch lunch, run errands and gather research for the famous journalist to help her prep for interviews.
“It was a great learning experience,” Nevils recalled of her time working for Vieira, which allowed her to meet many public figures, includingGeorge Clooney,Leonardo DiCaprio,Barbra Streisandand many of the major players in the 2008 presidential race.
Nevils eventually landed a job as a producer for NBC. She toldArts & Sciencesthat her role involved 60-plus hour workweeks, filled with pitching stories, conducting research, finding guests and packaging the three-to-five-minute segments on the show.
“At the end of the day, what’s most important to me is that my work gets seen and that it makes a difference to the people who watch it — that it informs them, makes them laugh or gives them something to talk about with their moms,” she told the magazine at the time.
In 2014, her career also reached a new high. As the assistant producer forA Leap of Faith: A Meredith Vieira Special, Nevils was nominated for an Emmy award for outstanding feature story in a news magazine with the rest of the production team.
Nevils was also billed as a producer on several high-profile shows for NBC, includingHeadliners,90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?andRoyal Wedding Watch.
As Nevils recounted in her interview with Farrow in his book, she attended the 2014 Sochi Olympics along with Lauer.
In Nevils' account, she was tasked in Sochi with working with Vieira, who’d been brought back toTodayto do Olympics coverage, and they ran into Lauer at the hotel bar one night.
Paul Drinkwater/NBC/Getty
At the end of the night, Nevils, who’d had six shots of vodka, ended up going to Lauer’s hotel room twice — once to retrieve her press credential, which Lauer had taken as a joke, and the second time because he invited her back, she revealed in the book.
Once she was in his hotel room, Nevils alleged that Lauer kissed her, then pushed her onto the bed and asked if she liked anal sex. Farrow wrote that Nevils said she “declined several times,” but he allegedly “just did it” and didn’t use lubricant. Nevils claimed the encounter was painful and that she “bled for days.”
“It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” she told Farrow in the book. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.”
Nevils says in the book that she had more sexual encounters with Lauer back in N.Y.C., telling Farrow, “It was completely transactional. It was not a relationship.”
At Vieira’s urging, Nevils reported her ordeal to NBC executives in the fall of 2017, in the wake of theHarvey Weinsteinscandal. Lauer was fired; Nevils went on medical leave in 2018 and was eventually paid, Farrow revealed, “seven figures.”
Matt Lauer.Charles Sykes/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock
In a statement read on-air on Oct. 9, 2019, on theTodayshow, NBC News said, “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.”
Lauer and his longtime wife,Annette Roque,separatedafter his firing; theirdivorce was finalizedin September 2019.
“They are both focused on their three children,” a source told PEOPLE at the time.
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predatorswas published on Oct. 15, 2019.
In May 2020, Laurer published an op-ed onMediateclaiming thatFarrow “falsely accused” him of rape, though he acknowledged “having a consensual, yet inappropriate relationship with a fellow employee in the workplace.”
But Lauer denied Nevils' allegation that he raped her.
“This accusation was one of the worst and most consequential things to ever happen in my life, it was devastating for my family, and outrageously it was used to sell books,” he said.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go tohotline.rainn.org.
source: people.com
