What To Know
- Brooke Nevils detailed the severe personal and professional consequences she faced after reporting Matt Lauer for sexual misconduct.
- Struggling with the aftermath, Nevils experienced significant mental health challenges.
- Despite these hardships, Nevils has rebuilt her life.
Warning: The following post contains discussions of self-harm and sexual assault.
In 2017, former anchor Matt Lauer was fired by NBC amid allegations of sexual misconduct. One of his accusers, former NBC employee Brooke Nevils, came forward with detailed claims about an encounter that she says occurred while the two were on assignment at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Unfortunately, Nevils soon learned that doing the right thing can come at a steep personal cost.
In her upcoming book, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, Nevils opened up about the harassment she endured due to reporting Lauer, including having to give up her career. Without the right coping mechanisms, she found herself in the psych ward.
“I was an NBC talent assistant at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, and the night before had been a blur but not an incomprehensible one. My longtime boss and mentor, Meredith Vieira, had just become the first woman in history to anchor prime-time Olympic coverage solo, and we’d met for a glass of wine in our hotel bar to celebrate,” she wrote in her book, which was later published as an excerpt on The Cut.
“We’d been there for a while when her former Today co-anchor, Matt Lauer, happened to walk in. We waved him over, and I patted the seat next to me for him to join us,” said Nevils. “Nothing would ever be the same again.”
According to Nevils, the day after she filed a complaint, “Matt was questioned by NBC and fired by NBC News chairman Andrew Lack later that night.” After the story broke, she became a media target. “The next day, an investigative reporter was texting my personal cell phone,” she recalled. “Eventually, a tabloid began calling my co-workers at 30 Rock, apparently asking whether they were aware that I was Matt’s ‘mistress who’d gotten him fired.’”
The New York Times reported that Lack said in a statement that the company had “reason to believe this may not have been an isolated incident” after conducting what he described as a “serious review” of the allegations, but Nevils felt targeted, even though “the Times and Variety published a slew of other allegations against Matt.”
Nevils did not take the spotlight well and became despondent after losing her career and her privacy. “I’d started at NBC giving studio tours, and it had taken nearly a decade to work my way up to salaried prime-time news producer. Now that life was gone, and I barely recognized the train wreck I’d become. I was compulsive, paranoid, and drinking all the time,” said the former NBC employee.
“Soon I would find myself in a psych ward, believing myself so worthless and damaged that the world would be better off without me,” she admitted.
Nevils previously shared her account in Ronan Farrow‘s 2019 bestseller, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, in which she detailed the alleged assault, as well as her subsequent suicide attempt and hospitalization for PTSD.
The experience initially left her broken, but Nevils was able to rebuild her life and use her skills as a writer to critique a system that almost destroyed her while helping others. “Innocent men remain terrified of false allegations, while victims still face one terrible choice after another. We are left, then, with a system that works for no one but abusers,” she wrote.
“I have painstakingly rebuilt my life. I got married. I had two beautiful children. Every moment with my family is a precious piece of the life that I once believed I no longer deserved to live,” stated Nevils. “I can say that I know what it is to feel truly alone and ashamed, living a life that seems irredeemable, believing yourself to be worthless and unlovable.”
“Not one of these things — for any one of us — is ever true.”
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network‘s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or a loved one is in immediate danger, call 911.
If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, or contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.
