A New Book Says NBC's Culture of Hypermasculinity and Sports Allowed Matt Lauer to Anally Rape a Submissive Female Employee
Source – Ronan Farrow’s new book “Catch and Kill” recounts his investigation of Harvey Weinstein; the hurdles his then-employer NBC News put in his way that caused him to publish the story in the New Yorker instead. …
But 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.
At the time, NBC News kept Nevils’ identity anonymous from press reports at her request. The full details of her allegations have not been made public until now.
In the book, obtained by Variety, Nevils alleges that at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Lauer anally raped her in his hotel room. …
In Sochi … at the hotel bar where the NBC News team was staying, they ran into Lauer, who joined them. At the end of the night, Nevils, who’d had six shots of vodka, ended up going to Lauer’s hotel room twice — once to retrieve her press credential, which Lauer had taken as a joke, and the second time because he invited her back. Nevils, Farrow writes, “had no reason to suspect Lauer would be anything but friendly based on prior experience.”
Once she was in his hotel room, Nevils alleges, Lauer — who was wearing a T-shirt and boxers — pushed her against the door and kissed her. He then pushed her onto the bed, “flipping her over, asking if she liked anal sex,” Farrow writes. “She said that she declined several times.”
According to Nevils, she “was in the midst of telling him she wasn’t interested again when he ‘just did it,’” Farrow writes. “Lauer, she said, didn’t use lubricant. The encounter was excruciatingly painful. ‘It hurt so bad. I remember thinking, Is this normal?’ She told me she stopped saying no, but wept silently into a pillow.” Lauer then asked her if she liked it. She tells him yes. She claims that “she bled for days,” Farrow writes.
Nevils tells Farrow: “It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” she says. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.” …
Back in New York City, Nevils had more sexual encounters with Lauer. … “This is what I blame myself most for,’” she says to Farrow. “It was completely transactional. It was not a relationship.”
She was terrified about the control Lauer had over her career. After her encounters with Lauer ended, Nevils said she told “like a million people” about her situation with Lauer.
“She told colleagues and superiors at NBC,” Farrow writes. She moved to NBC’s Peacock Productions to be a producer, “and reported it to one of her new bosses there.”
“This was no secret,” Farrow writes.
This is just gut-wrenchingly horrible. It’s enough to make any person with a shred of human decency sick to their stomach. We’ve known for a couple of years now that Matt Lauer was lowest kind of sexual predator. That he was Harvey Weinstein with a more TV-friendly face, but that face was a mask that he wore while interviewing actresses, reporting on royal weddings and doing cooking segments to hide the fact he’s really a sadistic monster. And like all predators, he and Weinstein chose their prey based on how weak they were. The way a wolfpack seeks out the injured caribou, they attacked the ones who were weak because they lacked power or they’d had a lot to drink. It’s nauseating. And horrifying. And enraging.
We also knew that NBC was aware, at least to some degree, that he was sexually assaulting his female staffers. Unless they expect us to believe he installed the rape lock on his office door himself. And he never struck me as a big DIY Guy who’s handy with tools and wiring.
But this is another thing entirely. This is a whole other level. Here we’ve got Brooke Nevils, on the record, putting her name on it, giving a face to the victims of Lauer’s string of crimes. And what’s more, we’ve got confirmation direct from the source that she went to her bosses. She reported it. They knew about it. And did nothing.
Yes, Matt Lauer is a sexual harasshole who belongs in a penitentiary. The women of the world deserve to know they’re safe from this vicious sexual deviant. And he deserves the same treatment he gave her in that Sochi hotel room. But from what we’re learning thanks to Ronan Farrow’s reporting and the courage of Ms. Nevils coming forward like this, his bosses ought to be indicted under RICO for aiding and abetting his crimes. It’s disgusting and justice needs to be done. More than just a TV morning anchor losing his job.
Now, NBC, I believe you were talking about some other media outlet?