Ex-CNN Host Brooke Baldwin Says She Was Drugged by Older Man in Terrifying Incident
What To Know
- Ex-CNN host Brooke Baldwin has revealed she was drugged and possibly sexually assaulted by an older man..
- She is sharing her story publicly for the first time on her Substack.
- Baldwin explained that she had previously avoided making her experiences personal in public discussions about sexual assault, but now feels compelled to speak out to help others who may have similar experiences.
Former CNN Newsroom host Brooke Baldwin has revealed that an older man drugged her and she believes may also have sexually her at a hotel. Baldwin made the claim on her Substack, Unraveled With Brook Baldwin, on May 3.
The 46-year-old broadcaster says that the incident happened when she was 21, many years before she joined CNN. Only now, is she ready to go public with what happened after interviewing survivors of assault.
In a social media post on her Instagram Baldwin also shared footage of an emotional segment on CNN in 2018 where she is talking direct to camera about sexual assault. Her monologue came in the wake of psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford alleging that then-Supreme Court nominee Brad Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her as a teenager.
“This matters,” said Baldwin in the clip. “I want to mark this pivotal moment in American history. When sexual assault, something that doesn’t often offer more than a shameful whisper, is thrust into the open on national television.” Baldwin went on to talk about women who have experienced assault and how Ford was afraid to talk about her story.
“We all have our stories — the spiked drink, waking up on a cold hotel bathroom floor, the uncertainty, the shame, the thought, ‘I must have somehow brought this on myself,’ the silence, distrust, and invalidation. This is a pivotal moment in America for all of us.”
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On her Substack, after the monologue, Baldwin wrote, “When I delivered the final section of that monologue… You can see it in my eyes and hear it in my voice, but there was something I did not say that day. I wasn’t ready then. I am now. There was a very important pronoun I deliberately left out of my monologue — I.”
“I was afraid. Afraid to make it personal. Afraid to break the ‘rules’ of Journalism, but here’s the thing about truth — it doesn’t care about the rules,” she wrote on Instagram. “Today, in the middle of yet another reckoning, I’m done staying quiet. I’m saying it. All of it.”
Baldwin said that the encounter happened when she was on Spring Break in college. She went to Los Angeles with her friend, where Baldwin claims an older man spiked her drink.
“I woke up on the cold, hard bathroom tile floor of my Los Angeles hotel room with a man I did not know. For years, I did not have language for what I believed may have been done to me,” the former anchor wrote. “I was 21. Alone at a very adult bar in Beverly Hills. And then I remember two much older men appearing beside me. Offering me a drink.”
After that, Baldwin claims that the rest of the night comes “only in flashes.” There was a black SUV. She woke up half-dressed on the cold bathroom floor at the Chateau Marmont. “There was a deep, kind of grogginess the next day that I did not understand,” she said.
She did a frantic check of her body and breathed a sigh of relief when she believed that “penetration hadn’t happened.”
“At least that was the story I told myself,” Baldwin wrote. She felt shame and shock. “I am sharing this story not for sympathy. Not for drama or clicks. And not because my story is the story here. I am sharing it because… it matters… and maybe somewhere… There is a woman reading this right now and wondering about her own experience: Wait, was that assault? Did something happen to me, too? Have I also been minimizing my own experience for years?”
Baldwin was fired from CNN in 2021. At the time, she said it was her own decision to leave. But, in a 2024 op-ed with Vanity Fair, Baldwin said that she “couldn’t tell the whole truth” about why she left.
She was let go by then-network chief Jeff Zucker. They had a dispute over moving Baldwin’s producer off of her team. She also shared that she “got told no a lot” when CNN had “become a male-dominated team.”
Badlwin married English producer James Fletcher in 2018, but they split in 2023.
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual assault, contact the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network‘s National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). If you or a loved one is in immediate danger, call 911.
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