Brooke Nevils on Matt Lauer Labeling Their Sexual Relationship as 'Consensual': 'Consent and Agreement Are Not Synonymous' By Nicholas Rice

Brooke Nevils has reacted to Matt Lauer labeling their sexual relationship as “consensual,” after she made allegations that the TV journalist raped her.

In 2017, Nevils alleged that Lauer anally raped her in his hotel room when she was working as a “talent assistant” for Today’s coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Lauer was fired from the network within 24 hours of Nevils filing the complaint, and several other women later came forward with allegations against him as well.

The TV journalist, now 68, denied the allegations against him at the time, saying in a statement read on air by his former Today co-anchor, Savannah Guthrie, that the claims were “untrue or mischaracterized,” and he later doubled down on his denial of Nevils’ allegations in a letter to Variety in 2019, denying that he raped Nevils, and he instead described their relationship as “an extramarital, but consensual, sexual encounter.”

Now Nevils is releasing a memoir, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, which includes a detailed account of the incident and what occurred after. In an interview with NPR on Jan. 29, she said that Lauer’s claim that their relationship was “consensual” is inaccurate, stating, “Consent and agreement are not synonymous.”

“When one person has power over the other, it’s not really consent. It’s submission,” she continued. “So when you’re a subordinate and the most powerful person in your industry asks you to come to his hotel room, which in our industry, hotel rooms aren’t [looked at the same] way they are in a social sense, [it’s different]. We work in hotel rooms all the time. I’d been to his hotel room already for a rehearsal, I’d been there earlier that night. They’re not freighted places the way they are in other industries.”

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After Guthrie, 54, announced on air that NBC received a complaint about Lauer’s alleged “inappropriate sexual behavior” and had terminated his employment, the network later acknowledged receiving additional complaints, including one from a former employee who alleged that the journalist sexually assaulted her in his office in 2001. More women subsequently continued to come forward anonymously after Lauer’s firing to accuse him of sexual harassment.

Despite denying the allegations against him in 2017, Lauer did acknowledge the personal toll his actions had taken on his loved ones in his statement that was shared on air at the time. “I regret that my shame is now shared by the people I cherish dearly. Repairing the damage will take a lot of time and soul-searching, and I’m committed to beginning that effort. It is now my full-time job,” he said, adding that the situation “forced me to take a very hard look at my own troubling flaws. It’s been humbling.”

Later, in October 2019, Variety published an excerpt from Ronan Farrow’s book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, in which Nevils spoke out more about the alleged rape. She said that she “declined” Lauer “several times” and was “too drunk to consent.”

In Lauer’s response to the publication, in which he called his sexual relationship with Nevils “consensual,” he further stated: “The story Brooke tells is filled with false details intended only to create the impression this was an abusive encounter. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

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Nevils details both her alleged rape by Lauer and the aftermath of reporting it to NBC in her new memoir.

In an excerpt published by The Cut, Nevils — who went on to work as a primetime news producer at NBC after the alleged incident — claimed that the pain she felt the morning after her first assault was “undeniable,” further stating, “It hurt to walk. It hurt to sit. It hurt to remember.”

Nevils also claimed that, later that day, Lauer emailed her something to the effect of, “You don’t call, you don’t write — my feelings are hurt! How are you?”

“I had no idea how to respond, but I knew that to ask anyone for help would only make it worse,” Nevils wrote in her memoir, per The Cut excerpt. “Shameful secrets are like that. To trust anyone is to give them power over you. I was totally alone, drowning in plain sight.”

In her interview with NPR, Nevils opened up more about what she thought of the work culture at NBC.

“When your job is to work with the talent, when these are people who have to be kept happy, their opinion of you can make or break your career. Annoying them can mean you’re never allowed on a set again — that changes the dynamic of every single interaction that you have,” she said. “And another part of that is that any attention that they give you professionally, you feel is a positive thing that you are lucky to get. And people who are in power know they’re in power. That’s something that they wield every single day.”

When Nevils eventually spoke out against Lauer, after not doing so for several years, she said fear held her back, as she believed speaking out would have negative implications on her future, especially her career.

“When I made that complaint, I knew who Matt Lauer was,” she explained to NPR. “I knew what he meant to the company. I knew what the Today show meant to millions and millions of people because I was one of those people. It meant the world to me. I knew what NBC meant to me, it was my family. It was my identity. And I knew I was breaking a sort of code by speaking up. And I assumed that the only career that would be ended by that would be mine. And I was okay with that, because whatever the consequences were, I knew I could not live with the knowledge that if I didn’t say something, it could continue.”

Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe is out Tuesday, Feb. 3, wherever books are sold.

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 to rainn.org.