“I felt like I had ruined everything.”

Warning: This story contains explicit language and depictions of sexual assault and misconduct.

Brooke Nevils has opened up about what happened after the accusations against Matt Lauer that led to his firing at NBC in 2017.

Nevils’ upcoming memoir, “The Unspeakable: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Believe” (published February 3), details a sexual encounter with a former Today show anchor who was fired in 2017 after reporting on an alleged assault that occurred during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

In an excerpt published in The Cut on January 28, Nevils detailed how her mental health deteriorated as a result of repeated sexual encounters with Lauer, now 68, which she kept secret for many years. She remembers that after their first encounter together in Sochi, when Lauer “insisted that he wanted to have anal sex,” she felt “completely alone, drowning in plain sight” and felt like she had “obviously done something wrong.”

She initially decided to “try to bury what happened,” but when Lauer emailed her the next day to ask how she was doing, she wrote, “There was no other way forward other than panic and confusion.”

There were several more incidents of what NBC News would later call “alleged ‘inappropriate sexual conduct in the workplace'” before Nevils and Lauer filed their charges in 2017.

In 2019, Lauer denied raping Nevils in a lengthy letter to Variety magazine.

“Once Matt called me into his dressing room and I went there. Two other times I went there on my way to work. One time I said to myself, “I’m not the naive fool I was in Sochi and Matt was kneeling in my office.” I told myself I wasn’t the girl to cause trouble. I always thought it was time for me to take back control. But I never did. I just dragged myself into my own abuse,” Nevils wrote.

This encounter left her feeling “more and more like I was being drawn into quicksand and disappearing” and that “no matter how much alcohol I drank, I couldn’t withstand that deceitful, invisible feeling.”

“Up until reporting Matt, I had told probably 10 or 12 people a cleaned-up, idealized version of what happened, never suggesting it was anything other than my choice,” Nevils wrote. She said her friends’ faces would “go pale” after they told her about it. They advised her that she “had to get out” of NBC.

“It will be years before what happened to me can be called assault, and it will be years before the state comes to terms with sexual harassment and assault,” she continued.

Nevils informed Lauer after learning that “at least two teams of reporters from two different publications, Variety and the Times,” were investigating the news anchor. She said she knew it was “only a matter of time” before her experience came to light and that she “didn’t really know what to do” but ended up reporting it.

She then worked at NBC for “a few more months” before taking what would eventually become permanent leave.

“Little did I realize I had been in a train accident,” she said at the time after reporting her complaint. “I was obsessive, paranoid, and always drinking. I felt that I had ruined everything, hurt and humiliated those I loved. I soon found myself in a psychiatric ward, believing that I was worthless and damaged and that the world would be better off without me.”

Nevils is now happily married with “two beautiful children” and has been “struggling to rebuild her life” since leaving NBC nine years ago.

“Every moment I spend with my family is a precious part of a life I once believed I didn’t deserve to live anymore,” she wrote of a time when she was suicidal.

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Nevils first shared her story in her own words in 2019 in Ronan Farrow’s book Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators. Mr. Farrow wrote in his book that in the two years after Mr. Lauer was fired, Mr. Nevils “attempted suicide,” was “hospitalized with post-traumatic stress disorder, became a heavy drinker, and withdrew.”

“She lost 14 pounds and went to the doctor 21 times in one month,” Farrow wrote about Nevils.

In her book, Nevils writes that in the aftermath of the rape charges and reporting Lauer, she “lost everything I held dear.”

After Nevils filed her complaint, several other women came forward with allegations against Lauer, but Nevils broke her silence about the allegations in a statement read by former colleagues on air. “While some of the things that have been said about me are false or misunderstood, there is enough truth in these stories that I feel embarrassed and embarrassed,” he said in a statement.

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or visit rainn.org.