Matt Lauer Accuser Brooke Nevils Says She Was 'Curled on the Floor' Like a 'Wounded Dying Animal' After Her Identity Was Public
- - Matt Lauer Accuser Brooke Nevils Says She Was 'Curled on the Floor' Like a 'Wounded Dying Animal' After Her Identity Was Public
Julia MooreFebruary 5, 2026 at 2:46 AM
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Brooke Nevils; Matt Lauer
Beowulf Sheehan; Noam Galai/WireImage
Brooke Nevils has released a new memoir that includes details about sexual encounters she had with former Today show co-anchor Matt Lauer, which led to his firing in 2017. Lauer previously denied the rape allegations
In Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, Nevils writes about the moment her identity became public
She remembers lying on the floor, "curled in a ball" after her name was published
Brooke Nevils is sharing what happened after she reported Today's former anchor Matt Lauer for alleged sexual assault to NBC in 2017, which resulted in his immediate firing.
Nevils alleged Lauer anally raped her in his Sochi hotel room in 2014, a claim he has denied multiple times. In a new memoir, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, Nevils describes what took place after her identity became public in 2019. Her name was revealed after Variety ran an excerpt of Ronan Farrow's 2019 book, Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators.
"The first paragraph summarizes the book's other 400-plus pages, while the second says that 'Farrow's most explosive interview in the book is with Brooke Nevils, the former NBC News employee whose complaint about Matt Lauer led to the co-anchor's firing from the Today show in 2017,'" she writes in her memoir of Variety's story. "The next morning, my name and photo had already been aired on national television as, once again, I'd slept through it all."
Brooke Nevils' new memoir, 'Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe'
Penguin Random House
She woke up to "reporters...camped outside our apartment, buzzing the door, calling, and texting." The Variety article, she wrote, had summarized "my interview in the most salacious way possible," to the extent that she "felt like I was reading about someone else entirely, and I felt terrible for her."
"But all this? This wasn't my story. While Matt was anchor of Today, it felt as though every story had been his to tell, including what he did to my body. Once I made the complaint to NBC, its contents became NBC's to characterize, and thus what Matt did to my body became 'inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.' Now it was Farrow's turn; it was his story now. I was still just a nobody from nowhere—a tiny, massless, meaningless object being tossed about, the plaything of larger people and powers."
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"I was on the floor of our bedroom, curled in a ball, staring at the place where the floor met the baseboard, when I felt my then fiancé's hand at the base of my spine," Nevils wrote about the morning after her identity became public. "He was touching me cautiously, as though I were a wounded, dying animal who might lash out at him. Matt had released an open letter, he said, and it was not short."
Nevils included the full, 4,800-word letter Lauer penned for Variety in her book, in which he vehemently denied raping her, and remembered "waiting for the horror and revulsion—and the inevitable regret that he'd stayed with me—to appear on [her fiancé's] face."
"'I can't believe they put this monster on television for twenty years,' he said. 'I can't believe you were alone in a room with his guy in Russia,'" she recalled her fiancé telling her.
To Nevils, it felt like "he'd finally met the Matt Lauer I had been describing for all these years."
His letter "let the mask drop," Nevils wrote. "Matt’s open letter is worth more than any apology. It relieves me of the need to convince anyone who Matt really is ... Anyone who proudly signs his name to such a letter has no business in a position of power over other human beings."
"Matt's words, clearly meant to make me regret exposing him, are instead a testament to exactly why I did. Reporting him was the right thing to do. It had to be done. I would do it again."
Matt Lauer reports ahead of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics on February 5, 2014 in Sochi, Russia.
Scott Halleran/Getty
“But that does not change the fact that Matt's open letter is still what is found when anyone searches the internet for my name, which he repeats fifteen separate times. There is no hiding it when I apply for jobs or try to hire a caregiver for my children, who will one day be taunted with Matt's words at the bus stop and in the school locker room," she continued. "I am a living cautionary tale for any woman who might dare to speak out against a powerful abuser."
When the rape allegations initially surfaced, NBC said in a statement: “Matt Lauer’s conduct was appalling, horrific and reprehensible, as we said at the time. That’s why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. Our hearts break again for our colleague."
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.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
