In the news
Former NBC Today show host Matt Lauer released a graphic letter last week attacking one of his sexual assault accusers, saying, “I will no longer provide them the shelter of my silence.” Lauer spoke out after former NBC colleague Brooke Nevils said Lauer anally raped her in his hotel room in Sochi, Russia, where they were covering the 2014 Winter Olympics. “I was too drunk to consent,” Nevils said, adding that she “wept silently into a pillow” while he forced himself on her. Lauer called her “a fully enthusiastic and willing partner,” describing the “variety of sexual acts” they performed. Lauer was fired from the Today show in 2017 after numerous women accused him of sexually preying on them; he insisted last week that “I have never assaulted anyone or forced anyone to have sex.” Nevils called his letter, which paints her as a jilted lover, “a case study in victim blaming.”
Actor Jeremy Renner was drunk and high on cocaine when he threatened to kill himself and his ex-wife Sonni Pacheco, she alleged in court documents published by TMZ.com this week. The couple split in 2014 after less than a year of marriage, and Pacheco now wants full custody of their 6-year-old daughter, saying Renner, 48, is too dangerous. On the night in question, Pacheco says, Renner put a gun in his own mouth and later fired the gun into the ceiling while their daughter slept in her bedroom. She says their nanny once overheard Renner saying he should kill Pacheco, then himself, because “it was better” that their daughter “have no parents” than have her as a mother. Renner’s spokesperson called the accusations “dramatizations” with “a specific goal in mind.”
Jane Fonda was handcuffed and arrested last week along with 15 other climate change protesters after being told repeatedly to leave the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Fonda, 81, was charged with unlawfully demonstrating, “crowding,” and “obstructing,” police said. The Academy Award winner, famous for her Vietnam War protesting, recently moved to Washington, D.C., so that she could become more active in climate change protesting and lobbying. “Come get arrested with me,” she had told fellow activists. ■
