It Was a Rape Allegation, Not Sexual Harassment, That Got Matt Lauer Fired From NBC

When Matt Lauer was fired from NBC News in November 2017 for “inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace,” media watchers were stunned that it happened quickly, swiftly, and with no leak to the press or Gloria Allred-style press conference by the victim. At the time, Page Six reported that they were told by an anonymous staffer that Lauer allegedly sexually assaulted a co-worker while they were both covering the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

(READ: Lauer Allegedly Sexually Assaulted Staffer During 2014 Olympics)

Ronan Farrow interviewed Lauer’s accuser, Brooke Nevils, for his upcoming book, “Catch and Kill.” Nevils shared the details of what happened in Sochi – and afterward – with Farrow. Nevils was working with Meredith Viera, Lauer’s former “Today” co-host. One night Viera and Nevils were having drinks at the hotel bar (really, what else do you do in Sochi?) when they ran into Lauer. Lauer joined them. Later that night Nevils, who’d had six shots of vodka, went to Lauer’s hotel room to retrieve the press pass “he’d taken as a joke,” and then came back again at his invitation.

Nevils told Farrow that based on her prior experience with Lauer, she “didn’t expect Lauer to be anything but friendly,” but that everything changed once she was in the hotel room.

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.”

Nevils and Lauer engaged in additional sexual encounters back in New York. Of those, Farrow writes:

“Sources close to Lauer emphasized that she sometimes initiated contact. What is not in dispute is that Nevils, like several of the women I’d spoken to, had further sexual encounters with the man she said assaulted her. ‘This is what I blame myself most for,’ she said. ‘It was completely transactional. It was not a relationship.’”

Lauer admitted to having sex with Nevils in Sochi, but said it was consensual.

“I had an extramarital affair with Brooke Nevils in 2014. It began when she came to my hotel room very late one night in Sochi, Russia. We engaged in a variety of sexual acts. We performed oral sex on each other, we had vaginal sex, and we had anal sex. Each act was mutual and completely consensual.

Nevils said she finally came forward after the #MeToo movement gained momentum in the fall of 2017, telling Meredith Viera about the assault. Viera was distraught, according to Nevils, and urged her to go to HR immediately. Viera’s visceral reaction could have something to do with the fact that Lauer behaved creepily toward her over the years and was even caught on camera telling her to “keep bending over. It’s a nice view.”

(Read: Gross! Matt Lauer Caught on Video Creeping on Meredith Viera)

Though NBC News fancies itself an example of how to correctly handle a claim of sexual harassment by a senior employee, Nevils contends that because the network was so quick to say that the alleged assault happened in Sochi, it wasn’t long until everyone at NBC News knew that Nevils was the accuser. Her work life became “torture,” and after being on medical leave for several months she accepted a settlement and left NBC News.

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