Matt Lauer made an unusual outing with girlfriend Shamin Abbas nearly two months after his accuser Brooke Nevils released a memoir detailing her 2014 rape allegation.
The ousted Today show anchor, who has vehemently denied Nevils’ claims, was spotted in Sag Harbor, Lil., on Monday night, marking the first time Lauer has been seen since making the bombshell.
The couple bundled up in coats and the former news anchor donned a hat as they strolled through the Hamptons village.
In her revealing novel, “The Unspeakable: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe,” Nevils branded Lauer a “monster” and described the bloody aftermath of the rape allegation.
At the time of the alleged attack, Nevils was working as an NBC talent assistant for the Sochi Olympics and had been drinking with her “longtime boss and mentor” Meredith Vieira the night before Lauer joined her.
She claimed that she was “drunk and alone,” her body “unsteady,” and her mind “fuzzy (and) frantic” when Lauer “insisted on having anal sex” in a “rotating room.”
Nevils said she woke up in a hotel room in Russia with “blood caked on my underwear and the sheets underneath.”
“At the time, I didn’t know what to call it other than strange and humiliating. But at the time, there was undeniable pain. It hurt to walk, it hurt to sit, it hurt to remember,” she said.
Nevils also admitted that “if anyone else had done this to[her][she]would have gone to the police,” but ultimately chose not to because of her high profile.
She also claimed that Lauer sexually assaulted her on “four more occasions,” one of which occurred in a dressing room at NBC.
Lauer, 68, has always maintained that their relationship was “mutual and completely consensual.”
Nevils eventually filed a complaint against Lauer with NBC in 2017, but several other women came forward with their own claims.
Lauer has denied the allegations of sexual misconduct and was fired within 24 hours. He has not been charged or convicted of any crime.
He divorced his wife Annette Locke in 2019 after 19 years of marriage and married Abbas the same year.
Weeks before Nevils’ memoir put the disgraced journalist back in the headlines, Abbas had encouraged his girlfriend to return to her career.
“She’s encouraging him to keep trying and she’s definitely persistent. There are examples of second and third acts with other stars, so they think people will give him a chance,” a source exclusively told Page Six last December.
However, other sources have previously said that Lauer had been in talks to return some time ago, but was met with a “firm ‘no’.”
In the years since his firing from NBC, Lauer has lived a quiet life in the Hamptons, occasionally being seen in public spending time with his three children.
If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call our Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.
