According toVariety, inCatch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, out Oct. 15, Farrow interviews former NBC News employee Brooke Nevils, whose complaint about Lauer led to hisfiringin November 2017. At the time, Nevils’ identity was kept anonymous at her request; this is the first time the full details of her allegations have been made public.
Nevils alleges in the book, according toVariety, that at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Lauer anally raped her in his hotel room.
A rep for Lauer did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
In Nevils’ account, according toVariety, she was tasked in Sochi with working with formerTodayco-anchorMeredith Vieira, who’d been brought back to the show to do Olympics coverage, and they ran into Lauer at the hotel bar one night.
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, she says in the book, according toVariety.
Once she was in his hotel room, Nevils alleges, according toVariety, Lauer kissed her, then pushed her onto the bed and asked if she liked anal sex. Farrow writes that Nevils said she “declined several times,”Varietyreports, but he allegedly “just did it” and didn’t use lubricant. Nevils reportedly claims the encounter was painful and that she “bled for days.”
“It was nonconsensual in the sense that I was too drunk to consent,” she reportedly tells Farrow in the book. “It was nonconsensual in that I said, multiple times, that I didn’t want to have anal sex.”
Matt Lauer.Charles Sykes/Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock
Nevils says in the book that she had more sexual encounters with Lauer back in New York City, according toVariety, telling Farrow: “It was completely transactional. It was not a relationship.”
At Vieira’s urging, Nevils reported her ordeal to NBC executives in the fall of 2017, in the wake of theHarvey Weinsteinscandal,Varietyreports. Lauer was fired, Nevils went on medical leave in 2018 and was eventually paid, Farrow writes, according toVariety, “seven figures.”
PEOPLE is out to reps for Vieira and Farrow.
In a statement read on-air Wednesday on theTodayshow, NBC News said, “Matt Lauer’s conduct was appalling, horrific and reprehensible, as we said at the time. That’s why he was fired within 24 hours of us first learning of the complaint. Our hearts break again for our colleague.”
RELATED VIDEO: Ann Curry Says She Reported Matt Lauer for Sexual Harassment in 2012 on Behalf of a Colleague
He addressed his past relationships with colleagues ina second statementto theWashington Postin April 2018.
Lauer and his longtime wifeAnnette Roqueseparatedafter his firing; theirdivorce was finalizedin September.
“They are both focused on their three children,” a source told PEOPLE at the time.
Catch and Killis out Oct. 15.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go toonline.rainn.org.
source: people.com
