You might know the name Ronan Farrow by now because not only is he Mia Farrow’s son, but he’s also responsible for initiating the Me Too Movement with his damaging piece in the New Yorker in October 2017.
But the journalist isn’t stopping there either, Farrow’s new book that drops on October 15th, “Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators,” recounts his Harvey Weinstein investigation and other bombshell accusations.
One of the explosive allegations is that Matt Lauer raped an NBC colleague.
If you were really trying to estimate the level of surprise of the powerful Hollywood industry players and journalists who were exposed after Ronan Farrow dropped his Harvey Weinstein investigation in October 2017, then you’d probably figure that either Charlie Rose or Matt Lauer were the most surprising.
None of the Hollywood stars exposed were surprising like Louis CK, Kevin Spacey, Brett Ratner, some powerful agents, but especially not Harvey Weinstein.
There were always rumors about Weinstein that span decades and the only reason why it didn’t become a national story earlier was because people were afraid it would ruin their careers.
Weinstein was actually aware of Farrow’s piece before it was published and the Academy Award-winning super producer hired an investigative firm called Black Cube, which employs ex-Mossad officers, to stop him – either through intimidation or by other means. Thankfully, it didn’t work.
But the most explosive allegation in Farrow’s new book is an interview with Brooke Nevils, a former NBC News employee, whose accusation about Matt Lauer’s sexual misconduct ultimately led to his firing from the “Today” show in 2017.
At the time, NBC News kept the identity of Nevils private but the full details of her “complaint” are about to be public.
Nevils alleges that Matt Lauer anally raped her in his hotel room at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
She recounts, one night over drinks with “Today” co-anchor Meredith Vieira at the hotel bar – where the NBC News team was staying – they bumped into Lauer, who joined them.
At the end of the night, Nevils – who was admittedly intoxicated – ended up going to Lauer’s hotel room twice — once to retrieve her press credentials, which Lauer had taken as some sort of flirty joke, and the second time because he invited her back. In the book it says Nevils “had no reason to suspect Lauer would be anything but friendly based on prior experience.”
She claims Lauer was wearing a T-shirt and boxers – pushed his body against hers and forcibly kissed Nevils. He pushed her onto the bed “flipping her over, asking if she liked anal sex,” and said no repeated times.
The harrowing account notes Nevils “was in the midst of telling him she wasn’t interested again when he ‘just did it. Lauer, she said, didn’t use lubricant. The encounter was excruciatingly painful. ‘It hurt so bad. I remember thinking, Is this normal?’” She allegedly bled for days following the incident.
However, in the book, Farrow notes that she had several more sexual encounters with Lauer.
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 says to Farrow. “It was completely transactional. It was not a relationship.”
Lauer denies the accusations and claims everything between the two was completely consensual.