A powerful and personal examination of our most persistent and dangerous misunderstandings
myths and stereotypes about sexual harassment and assault In 2017 Brooke Nevils made a
confidential HR complaint about one of the most powerful and familiar faces in media.
Twenty-four hours later the highest paid morning news anchor in history was fired stunning
millions of Americans in one of the MeToo era’s defining stories. Demanding answers—and the
intimate details of the most personal and painful humiliation of her life—the press soon
discovered her identity. But hers was not the kind of black-and-white story the media knew how
to tell. There’d been no explicit threats. She hadn’t screamed fought or gone to the police.
Instead she returned to her abuser again and again in a frantic attempt to “fix” an impossible
situation that threatened her livelihood and the people closest to her. Yet as MeToo unfolded
Brooke learned that messy stories like hers were far from the exception and that nearly
everything she’d believed about sexual harassment and assault—and how victims react to it—was
wrong. She began a yearslong effort to confront and understand her own experience not simply
as a woman reckoning with her past but as a journalist confronting the critical questions that
MeToo asked but ultimately left unanswered. Through groundbreaking interviews with leading
clinicians forensic professionals attorneys and frontline researchers Unspeakable Things
challenges our understanding of consent power and the lingering often misunderstood effects
of trauma and shame. Despite its rarefied setting at the height of fame power and American
media Brooke’s story serves as a textbook example of an all-too-common scenario that continues
to devastate lives and enable abusers. This book is a powerful re-examination of everything we
think we know the start to a new conversation and—for anyone who has ever felt ashamed
hopeless alone and afraid—a light in the dark.
