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Brooke Nevils’ Memoir Details Allegations Against Matt Lauer, Challenges Newsroom Power

Her memoir emphasizes how consent is shaped by power in celebrity newsrooms.

Overview

  • Nevils released Unspeakable Things on Feb. 3, recounting her allegation that Lauer anally raped her in his Sochi hotel room in 2014.
  • The book also describes a post-Sochi encounter in Lauer’s Today dressing room where she says he forced oral sex after saying it would only take a minute.
  • She writes that Lauer told her not to tell Meredith Vieira about returning to his hotel room, which she says reinforced the power imbalance she felt.
  • Lauer has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, characterizing the encounters as consensual, and he has not been criminally charged.
  • NBC fired Lauer within 24 hours of Nevils’ 2017 complaint and later reported earlier, then-unreported allegations dating to 1996, as Nevils critiques the EEOC-identified superstar harasser problem and narrow legal views of consent.