Brooke Nevils, a former NBC News producer who accused Matt Lauer of raping her in 2014, is revisiting the brutal experience in her upcoming memoir, “Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe.” Years after reporting the “Today” co-host, which led to Lauer being fired in 2017, Nevils reflects on the alleged assault and consensual encounters that followed, saying she hopes her experience will help others. “I have spent the long years since using my otherwise abandoned skills as a journalist to report and write the book about sexual harassment and assault that I wish had existed for me,” she writes in an excerpt from the book, obtained by The Cut. Here’s a look at what’s been revealed so far about Nevils’ forthcoming memoir. Nevils watched Matt Lauer on ‘TODAY’ as a child Nevils details watching the NBC morning show as a kid and feeling a special connection to its hosts. “When ‘Today’ would come on and you heard that opening music, it felt like you were transported to the center of the world where everything was happening,” she writes. “It was Matt Lauer, Katie Couric, Ann Curry and Al Roker. It felt like family to me.” This led her to study journalism in college and ultimately secure a position in NBC’s page program, where she was assigned to work on ‘Today.’ She later become a personal assistant to former co-host Meredith Vieira, and eventually landed a role as a producer for NBC. Nevils worked on a number of high-profile projects, including “90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?” and “Royal Wedding Watch.” The alleged assault happened during the 2014 Winter Olympics Nevil writes that her first sexual encounter with Lauer took place during NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. “I was mainly there just as a talent assistant,” Nevils writes. “It was my job to make sure things went as smoothly as possible for [Vieira] and the other talent that was there.” Nevils says she and a group that included Vieira were celebrating at a bar one night when Lauer joined them. “He came over and sat with us, and I felt like it couldn’t possibly be real,” she writes. “These were two people [Lauer and Vieira] that I had admired as journalists, as people, since I was a little girl. And I truly could not believe I was sitting there with a seat at the table with them. And I think I got carried away.” Nevils says she drank vodka shots that were ordered by Lauer before he invited her to his hotel room, where the alleged assault took place. She claims she woke up bleeding the next morning after he insisted on having anal sex. Nevils explains why she didn’t initially call police Nevils explains that she didn’t immediately report the rape to police for a number of reasons, primarily fear for her career. “I was in freaking Russia. Who would I call? Putin? The KGB? There was only NBC, and Matt Lauer was ‘Today’s’ longest-serving anchor with the biggest contract in the 60-year history of morning television, worth a reported $25 million a year,” she writes. “In the news business back then, his point of view was reality, and if you disagreed with it, you were wrong.” Nevils details going through a cycle of blaming herself for the assault. “The whole thing had to have been my fault,” she writes. “I had given him the wrong idea, failed to be clear, failed to convince him, failed to stop him, failed to find a graceful way out of the situation without embarrassing him. I certainly should not have bled. The only thing to do was to smooth it over, and smoothing things over for the talent was my actual day job. That, at least, I knew how to do.” Sexual encounters continued back in New York Nevils reveals that she and Lauer had additional sexual encounters after they returned to New York City, some of which she even initiated in hopes of reclaiming her power. “[I was] telling myself I wasn’t the same naïve idiot I’d been in Sochi or some girl Matt could just summon to her knees in his office,” she writes. “[I was] always thinking that this would be the time I took back control, but I never did. I just implicated myself in my own abuse.” According to Nevils, her “preexisting relationship” with Lauer made it all the more difficult for her to frame the interactions as abuse. “Even now, I hear ‘rape’ and think of masked strangers in dark alleys,” she writes. “Back then, I had no idea what to call what happened other than weird and humiliating.” The abuse landed Nevil’s in a psych ward Nevils describes how her mental health suffered from years of enduring repeated sexual encounters with Lauer while keeping it all a secret. After she eventually reported the abuse and Lauer was fired, she says she felt responsible for the consequences. “I barely recognized the train wreck I’d become. I was compulsive, paranoid and drinking all the time,” she writes. “I felt I’d ruined everything, hurt and embarrassed everyone I loved.” Soon, Nevils would find herself in a psych ward, “believing myself so worthless and damaged that the world would be better off without me.” In the aftermath of the abuse becoming public, several other women came forward with their own allegations against Lauer. His wife of 19 years, Annette Roque, filed for divorce in 2019. Later that year, Rowan Farrow further detailed Nevil’s allegations in his book “Catch and Kill.” In response, Lauer penned an open letter insisting the encounter in Sochi was an “extramarital but consensual” affair, not sexual assault. Nevil’s memoir, “Unspeakable Things,” is set to be released on Feb. 3. ...read more read less