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Brooke Baldwin: Fired CNN anchor recalls shocking sexual assault account | 5 things to know
Brooke Baldwin, ex-CNN anchor, reports being sexually assaulted at 21 by two older men who allegedly tampered with her drink at a Los Angeles hotel.
Former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin alleges that she believes she was sexually assaulted by two older men who covertly added a substance to her drink at a hotel in Los Angeles over twenty years ago.
Brooke Baldwin says she was ‘drugged’ by older man: 5 things to know
- Baldwin, now 46, elaborated on the purported event in a Substack post released on Monday, indicating that it occurred when she was 21-year-old “I woke up on the cold, hard bathroom tile floor of my Los Angeles hotel room with a man I did not know,” she wrote. “For years, I did not have language for what I believed may have been done to me.”
- Baldwin stated that she and her pal had journeyed to Los Angeles for their spring break. According to her, she was “[a]lone at a very adult bar in Beverly Hills” when “two much older men appear[ed] beside me” and proposed to buy her a drink.
- Baldwin said that she has had difficulty remembering the precise events and that the recollections come "only in flashes."She, however, She remembered seeing a black SUV prior to regaining consciousness half-dressed on the bathroom floor of the renowned Chateau Marmont hotel. “There was a deep, kind of grogginess the next day that I did not understand,” she wrote.
- Baldwin stated that she checked her body and was convinced that “penetration” had not occurred. “At least that was the story I told myself,” she wrote.
- She calrified that she is recounting this experience not to elicit sympathy or “drama or clicks”, but “she hoped other women questioning their own experiences might feel less alone.”
‘We all have our stories’, says Brooke Baldwin
In a post on her Instagram, Baldwin shared a poignant clip from a CNN segment in 2018, where she speaks directly to the camera regarding sexual assault. This monologue was delivered following the allegations made by psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford, who claimed that then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her during her teenage years.
“This matters,” Baldwin stated 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 further discussed women who have faced assault and how Ford was hesitant to share her narrative. “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.”
Brooke Baldwin's marriage and CNN firing
Baldwin was dismissed from CNN in 2021. At that time, she stated that her departure was a personal choice. However, in a 2024 op-ed for Vanity Fair, Baldwin revealed that she "couldn’t tell the entire truth" regarding the reasons for her exit.
She was terminated by the then-network president Jeff Zucker. A disagreement arose concerning the reassignment of Baldwin’s producer from her team. Additionally, she mentioned that she "got told no a lot" as CNN had "become a male-dominated team."
Baldwin wed English producer James Fletcher in 2018, but they separated in 2023.
