Matt Lauer Accuser Brooke Nevils Details Alleged 2014 Rape: ‘It Hurt to Walk. It Hurt to Sit. It Hurt to Remember’

Brooke Nevils, the former NBC staffer who has accused longtime Today anchor Matt Lauer of sexual assault, is sharing new details about her account in an excerpt from her upcoming memoir.

In the selection, published by The Cut on Jan. 28, Nevils revisits the events surrounding her allegations against Lauer, who was fired in 2017 after she reported an incident she says occurred during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Her memoir, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, is set for release Feb. 3 and focuses on what she describes as the personal and professional aftermath that followed.

“I have spent the long years since using my otherwise abandoned skills as a journalist to report and write the book about sexual harassment and assault that I wish had existed for me,” Nevils wrote in the excerpt.

Revisiting the Night in Sochi

Nevils begins by describing the night she says led to the alleged assault. She wrote that she had been at a bar with Today co-anchor Meredith Vieira when Lauer, now 68, joined them. Later, she said, she went to Lauer’s hotel room, where she described being “drunk and alone with Matt Lauer insisting on having anal sex.”

Nevils wrote that she woke the next morning to find her “underwear and the sheet beneath me caked with blood,” adding that the pain she experienced was “undeniable.” She continued, “It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to remember.”

In the excerpt, she also reflected on how she understood the experience at the time, writing that she “would never have used the word ‘rape’ to describe what had happened,” adding that she once associated the word with “masked strangers in dark alleys.” She wrote that she didn’t know what to call the experience then, “other than weird and humiliating.”

What She Says Happened After Returning to New York

Nevils wrote that she tried to talk to Lauer before leaving Russia, describing how she called him using “NBC burner” phones and was told, “Come see me when we’re back in New York.”

Back in New York, she said he told her he was sorry he hadn’t responded to her emails asking to talk — and invited her to come to his apartment that night. She wrote that he appeared “pleased, flattered, almost boyish,” and that she felt relieved he “wasn’t mad.”

Nevils wrote that before they had sex at his apartment, he “ducks out of the room” and returned “carrying an armful of towels,” telling her it was “just in case…because of what happened last time.” She described interpreting that moment as proof that he had seen the bleeding in Sochi and understood what had occurred.

Nevils also wrote that during her first visit to his apartment, when she asked why he preferred anal sex, he told her, “I like it because it’s transgressive.” She said there were “four more instances of alleged ‘inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace,’ as NBC News later characterized it,” including “one encounter I even initiated,” which she said she believed would allow her to reclaim control, but didn’t.

Addressing the “Why Did You Go Back?” Question

Nevils wrote that one of the most common questions she has faced — including, she said, from Lauer — is why an alleged victim would continue interacting with someone they say assaulted them.

She argued that her prior professional relationship with Lauer made it harder for her to immediately recognize the experience as assault. She wrote that she had worked at NBC first as a Page and later in the Today show green room, which she said influenced how she processed what happened.

In the excerpt, she also described how fear of consequences can shape a victim’s choices: “I have to consider not only whether anyone will believe me but how the allegation will impact everyone else in my life.” She added that the consequences of confronting or reporting an abuser can feel “unknowable and therefore much more terrifying,” while the abuse itself is “a known quantity that the victim has already survived.”

Nevils wrote that she told “10 or 12 people” versions of what happened that she described as “sanitized” and “idealized,” saying she did not frame it as anything other than her choice at the time. She wrote that friends’ reactions and advice — including urging her to leave NBC — stayed with her, and that it took years, along with a broader national reckoning around sexual misconduct, before she labeled her experience as assault.

Complaint, Firing, and Aftermath

Nevils wrote that she learned reporters from “two different publications, Variety and the Times,” were investigating Lauer and that she believed it was only a matter of time before her experience became public. She said she filed a complaint believing it would remain confidential.

She wrote that Lauer was questioned the next day and was fired that night by then–NBC News chairman Andrew Lack. She said additional allegations were published shortly afterward and that reporters began contacting her directly.

Nevils wrote that she took a leave of absence from NBC, where she had been working as a prime-time news producer, and that the leave would “ultimately prove permanent.” She described a period of severe emotional decline, writing that she became “compulsive, paranoid, and drinking all the time,” and later said she was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, believing she had ruined her life and the lives of people she cared about.

Lauer’s Denials and Nevils’ Life Now

In 2019, Lauer denied raping Nevils in a lengthy letter to Variety. He has said he had an “extramarital affair” with her but has maintained that the relationship was “completely consensual,” disputing her account.

Nevils previously shared her experiences in Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators in 2019.

In the excerpt, Nevils wrote that she has “painstakingly rebuilt” her life and is now married with two children. She ended with a message to others who feel trapped by shame and isolation, writing that feeling “worthless and unlovable” is “never true” — for anyone.