Ann Curry on former ‘Today’ co-host Matt Lauer’s accuser: ‘I believe she is telling the truth’
Ann Curry is speaking out about the rape accusation against her former Today co-host Matt Lauer.
“Brooke Nevils is a credible young woman of good character,” Curry wrote on Twitter Wednesday. “She came to NBC News an eager and guileless 20-something, brimming with talent.”
She continued, “I believe she is telling the truth. And that breaks my heart.”
Brooke Nevils is a credible young woman of good character. She came to NBC News an eager and guileless 20-something, brimming with talent.
I believe she is telling the truth. And that breaks my heart. https://t.co/k4LT3MEh5Q— Ann Curry (@AnnCurry) October 9, 2019
In Ronan Farrow’s new book, Catch and Kill, Nevils, speaking publicly for the first time, claimed that Lauer sexually assaulted her in a hotel room at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. She was a producer for NBC News, working with Meredith Vieira on the sporting event. She had spent her career at NBC, starting as a page and having a stint as Vieira’s assistant. While Nevils claimed she told multiple colleagues about the alleged incident — including supervisors — she said nothing happened until she told Vieira in 2017 as the #MeToo movement exploded. Nevils told Farrow that Vieira urged her to get a lawyer and go to HR. Lauer was terminated as a result, though NBC never named Nevils publicly, at her request.
In a long statement released on Wednesday, Lauer denied Nevils’s rape allegation, calling it “categorically false.” He said the encounter was “completely consensual” and categorized their relationship as an “extramarital affair.” (Read his statement in its entirety.)
Curry was promoted to co-anchor of Today after Vieira’s departure in 2011. She had a brief tenure, however. The next year she was demoted to “anchor at large,” a role she had until 2015 after negotiating an early exit from her contract with NBC News. It was widely rumored that Lauer was behind her Today demotion, having “undermined her from the start” on the show, which she felt was a “boys’ club atmosphere behind the scenes.”
In 2018, as Curry returned to TV with her first post-NBC project, a PBS series called We'll Meet Again, she broke her silence about her bitter departure from the network — and dropped the bombshell that she warned NBC executives about Lauer’s alleged sexual misconduct in 2012, the year she was pushed out of her Today anchor spot.
In an interview with the Washington Post, she said she took action after a female staffer came to her in tears, claiming she was “sexually harassed physically” by Lauer. Curry told the paper, “She was afraid of losing her job … I believed her. I told management they had a problem and they needed to keep an eye on him and how he deals with women.” (NBC told the paper there was no record of Curry’s claim.)
As for her working experience on the show, she called it a climate of “pervasive verbal sexual harassment." Being pushed out of the show, she said, “hurt like hell.”
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