Ex-NBC Today show host Matt Lauer raped colleague in hotel room, Ronan Farrow's book alleges
Former NBC 'Today' show host Matt Lauer raped co-host Brooke Nevils, Ronan Farrow's latest book 'Catch and Kill' alleges. The book, which features Farrow's accounts of the Harvey Weinstein investigation, also has an interview with ex-NBC News employee Nevils which says that Lauer anally raped her in a hotel room during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
According to a report in Variety, Nevils was working with another former 'Today' co-anchor Meredith Vieira at the event who was brought in to cover the Olympics at the time. The two women had drinks at the hotel bar where the team was staying - Nevils had six shots of vodka. The colleagues met Lauer at the hotel. Nevils said that she went to his hotel room two times the same night, once because he had taken her press credentials as a joke and the second time because he had asked her to come.
In the book, Farrow says that she had no reason to believe that he would be "anything but friendly" because of their exchanges so far. But, once she was in the room, she alleges that he had kissed her against the door and then had proceeded to push her on the bed, "flipping her over" and asking if she "liked anal sex." She is said to have said no many times. At the time, Lauer is said to have been dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of boxers.
Nevils said that she “was in the midst of telling him she wasn’t interested again when he ‘just did it,’” says the book. She also added that he did not use a lubricant making the "encounter" "excruciatingly painful." "'It hurt so bad. I remember thinking, Is this normal?’ She told me she stopped saying no, but wept silently into a pillow," Farrow says. She said she had "bled for days."
Nevils reportedly tells Farrow in the book, “It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent”, she says. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.” She had also reportedly told her colleagues at NBC and superiors and that it wasn't a secret. She also had sexual relations with him after the alleged assault but said that it was merely "transactional" and not a relationship. She also claimed that she faced a lot of judgment at the workplace after the incident.
Lauer was fired in November 2017 after the #MeToo reckoning over inappropriate sexual behavior at the workplace. However, the name of the accuser was not made public by NBC News and the details of the complaint are still not public knowledge. Nevils went on medical leave in 2018 and paid in millions, and was allegedly asked to read from a script that said that she had been "treated well" and that "NBC News was a positive example of sexual harassment."
NBC News and Lauer have not commented on the accusations. The book will hit stands on October 15.