Matt Lauer’s Accuser Entered Psych Ward After Her Name Leaked Following His Firing From NBC News

The woman who accused Matt Lauer of rape has revealed in her new book that following the leaking of her name to the press, she spent time in a psychiatric facility to cope with the fallout at NBC News.

In the just-released Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, former NBC News talent producer Brooke Nevils recounts both her complex relationship with the former NBC anchor, which developed after a “messy” sexual encounter while both were in Sochi for the 2014 Olympics, which she considers to have been rape. In the book, Nevils also probes the emotional turmoil she felt after disclosing the encounter and subsequent relationship with Lauer, who was swiftly fired by NBC when she came forward.

It was after she was named as his accuser that Nevils entered psychiatric treatment, she writes in her book. She was deeply distressed, believing that she was guilty of “breaking the code” at NBC, and that by coming forward, she had destroyed her own life and the lives of those she loved, and now felt a “profound worthlessness.”

“When I decided to write this book, I actually was in a psych ward,” Nevils writes. “At that extremely low point in my life, telling this story was not so much a choice but what felt like my last hope to offer anything meaningful to a world that had left me feeling utterly powerless, ashamed, and alone.”

Nevils spent 10 days undergoing a psychological evaluation and learned that she was experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder. This is “very common after sexual assault,” she writes in her book; she later pursued prolonged exposure therapy to combat the issue. 

“For me, the psych ward was rock bottom, and I wanted the most direct route out, even if that route was the steepest,” she wrote in her book. “Going to the weekly  prolonged exposure therapy was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.”

In her book, Nevils provides harrowing details of the physical pain she was in the morning after the Sochi encounter, which included anal penetration. Nevils said that she was bleeding for days afterwards and that these were details Lauer notably contested in his public rebuttals.

Lauer was swiftly fired from NBC News while earning $25 million annually for hosting Today once Nevils arrived at human resources along with an attorney to explain what had happened in Sochi and afterward. He maintains that he is innocent and that their affair was consensual. He is not guilty of sexual assault, he maintains. 

Nevil’s book details the Sochi encounter and provides more information on the four other sexual encounters she had with Lauer, some of which took place in his Manhattan home. When she saw him after they’d returned to New York from Russia, she writes that he told her that he finds anal sex to be “transgressive.” Before they had sex, she writes that Lauer left the room to fetch towels. Nevils explains that she read this as Lauer understanding the amount of bleeding she experienced when he assaulted her in Sochi. 

In October 2019, two years after his firing from NBC following the allegations against him by Nevils, which had by then been detailed in  Ronan Farrow’s book Catch and Kill, Lauer wrote an open letter denying the rape accusation. In the letter, he also claimed that Nevils changed her story regarding what happened in their relationship and was ultimately motivated by money. At the time, she called Lauer’s letter a “case study in victim blaming” and said he was trying to “bully” her into silence. In her book, Nevils goes into further detail on the letter.

“Matt’s open letter is worth more to me than any apology,” she wrote. “It relieves me of the need to convince anyone who Matt really is. … 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.”

Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe released Tuesday, Feb. 3 from Penguin/Viking.