To the casual observer, it may have appeared as nothing more than a harmless exchange—just a few offhand remarks from a well-known television personality to a young crew member he scarcely recognized. However, for Brooke Nevils, those words from Matt Lauer brought back a flood of painful memories she had spent years attempting to suppress. To her, his seemingly friendly smile felt insidious and deliberate.

“Weren’t you in Sochi?” he had asked. Indeed, Nevils had been there, in the Russian city, as part of the team covering the 2014 Winter Olympics. It was during this assignment that Nevils alleges Lauer, the highly compensated former anchor of the Today show, with a yearly salary of $25 million, sexually assaulted her.

At the time of the alleged incident, Nevils was a 29-year-old talent assistant, while Lauer, then 57, stood as one of the most prominent figures in broadcast journalism. The incident reportedly occurred after a night of drinking at the hotel bar, where Lauer had been buying vodka shots for Nevils and her supervisor, Meredith Vieira, who also co-hosted with him. Nevils claims the encounter left her physically injured and struggling to walk, marking the beginning of a harrowing chapter in her life.

She had indeed been in Sochi. It was in the Russian city, while working on coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics, that Nevils alleges Lauer, the Today show’s onetime $25 million-a-year anchor, sexually assaulted her.

At the time, she was a 29-year-old talent assistant and he was 57 – and one of the highest paid journalists in television history.

The alleged rape happened after he had been buying Nevils vodka shots in the hotel bar with her then boss – and Lauer’s co-host – Meredith Vieira. She claims that the encounter left her bleeding and struggling to walk. 

Nevils accusation – made at the height of the #MeToo movement – brought Lauer’s celebrated career crashing down despite the fact that he has always maintained that the sexual encounter with Nevils was consensual and denies any wrongdoing. He has faced no criminal charges. 

Now in her new book, Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe, Nevils explains why she said nothing about the alleged attack for three years, never reported it to police and continued meeting Lauer for sex for several months afterwards.

Brooke Nevils was in her late 20s when she alleges Matt Lauer raped her in Sochi

At the time of her accusation, Lauer was one of the highest paid journalists in TV history, earning $25 million a year

Lauer’s former colleagues Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb discuss the rape claim in 2019

Struggling with crippling shame, depression, and the fear she might lose her job if she spoke out, she says she relied on pills and booze to get her through the days.

She writes: ‘The only thing to do was to find a way to put one foot in front of the other, to find a way to live with myself, to try to forget. I chose drinking.

‘When life is too painful, alcohol is the most cost-effective escape.’ 

Then, two years after the alleged attack, she was tasked with recording Lauer’s voiceovers for a documentary she was working on. By this stage, she believed she’d ‘become a much more assertive person’ and no longer felt intimidated by the considerably more powerful Lauer.

She writes: ‘Matt greeted me that day as he would have any other producer… then, as he left the tracking booth to return to his office, he paused and asked with the warmest of grins: “Weren’t you in Sochi?”

‘A ghoulish grin lingered on his face.’

She said that, in an instant, she was ‘cut off at the knees.’

‘With just a phrase, he could open a bottomless well of shame, humiliation, and self-loathing.

‘I wondered for a long while whether he could have been so clueless as to genuinely believe I remembered Sochi fondly – but then I remember that he was once considered the best live interviewer in the business, that he was celebrated for his ability to instantly read his subjects and trigger the responses he wanted. 

‘As with so many things about Matt, the answer is unknowable. But that was the last time I ever saw him in person.’

It was only as the #MeToo movement gathered momentum that Nevils finally reported Lauer to her bosses at NBC. 

Nevils (circled) had been drinking with colleagues on the night of the alleged attack

Nevils with her then boss and Lauer’s co-host Meredith Vieira

Nevils in Sochi – at the time she was working as a talent assistant

As 2017 drew to a close, a growing number of accusations of sexual harassment and assault by men in positions of power were coming to light – about Fox boss Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and PBS talk show host Charlie Rose.

Journalists had started following up on rumors about Lauer, and Nevils believed it was only a matter of time before she was connected to those stories.

But in the book, she also reveals a much more poignant reason for her eventual decision to blow up her own career by talking about the ‘attack.’

In August 2017, her mom died suddenly from a catastrophic heart attack. It was three days before her 68th birthday.

‘When she died, I stopped throwing away my life,’ writes Nevils.

‘She spent the final years trying endlessly to bring her only daughter back to life, but I hadn’t listened. I broke her heart.’

Her mom had left behind a folder for Nevils, titled ‘For Brooke for comfort in event of my death.’ It contained letters and poems expressing how much Brooke meant to her – how much her life was worth.

‘When I opened that folder in 2017,’ she writes, ‘another shift in values occurred. For three and a half years I’d hated myself – for causing such pain to the people I loved, for making terrible choices to live with something that never should have happened, for the endless lies I’d told.

Celebrating Lauer’s 20th anniversary with Katie Couric in January, 2017 – by the end of the year he would out of a job and shunned by the industry

Nevils says she was prompted to report Lauer after her mother’s death

Last year it was reported that Lauer, now 67, appeared to be planning a return to the spotlight

‘But now I found that I could not hate my mother’s daughter, the precious little girl that she had loved so much, into whom she had instilled so much of herself. That little girl meant everything to her, and the time had come for her to mean something to me.

‘In the face of grief, shame lost its power.’

There was also a poem in the box that her mom had written out, called True Success by C Hoppe.

It read in part: ‘I hope my achievements in life shall be these: That I will have fought for what was right and fair, that I will have risked for that which mattered.’

Nevils, now 41, still believed that coming forward would be a ‘suicide mission.’

‘The math was not hard,’ she writes in the book. ‘Matt was going to win.’

But, she adds: ‘My mother’s death meant I’d inherit enough money to pay off my student loans and credit cards, making me debt-free for the first time since I was 19.

‘I didn’t have a mortgage or children to support. My boyfriend and I were moving in together so I wouldn’t be homeless, and I knew he would support me whatever I decided to do.

‘Silence and complicity were no longer my only options… now I would be the kind of person my mother had always believed I was.’

The day after Nevils reported Lauer to NBC, on November 29, 2017, he was fired.

Then the floodgates opened and more women came forward accusing him of sexual misconduct.

In a statement at the time, Lauer responded to those claims saying: ‘Some of what is being said about me is untrue or mischaracterized, but there is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed. 

‘I regret that my shame is now shared by the people I cherish dearly.’ 

Last year it was reported that Lauer, now 67, appeared to be planning a return to the spotlight, and was networking with former colleagues to see who could help him find a new job.

‘He believes he was unfairly treated and feels he still has something to say, something to offer – he’s just been waiting for the right moment,’ a source told the Daily Mail. 

Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe by Brooke Nevils is published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Random House