previous CNN Anchor Brooke Baldwin claims she believes she was sexually assaulted by two older men who secretly spiked her drink in a Los Angeles hotel more than two decades ago.
Brooke Baldwin says she was ‘drugged’ by older man: 5 things to know
- BaldwinThe 46-year-old elaborated on the incident in a Substack post on Monday, revealing that it happened when she was 21 years old. “I woke up on the cold, hard bathroom tile floor of my Los Angeles hotel room next to a man I didn’t recognize,” she wrote. “For years, I didn’t have the words to express what I thought might have happened to me.”
- Baldwin said she and her friends went to Los Angeles for spring break. According to her, she “[a]Alone in a very adult bar in Beverly Hills” when “two older men showed up[ed] Beside me” and offered to buy her a drink.
- Baldwin said she has difficulty remembering the exact incident and that her recollections “only come in fleeting moments.” However, she remembered seeing a semi-naked black SUV on the bathroom floor of the famous Chateau Marmont hotel before regaining consciousness. “The next day I felt a deep, groggy feeling that I couldn’t understand,” she wrote.
- Baldwin said she checked her body and was convinced “penetration” had not occurred. “At least that’s the story I tell myself,” she wrote.
- She clarified that she wasn’t telling the story to gain sympathy or “drama or clicks,” but rather “in the hope that other women questioning their own experiences might feel less alone.”
‘We all have a story,’ says Brooke Baldwin
In a post on Instagram, Baldwin shared a poignant clip from a 2018 CNN segment in which she spoke directly to the camera about sexual assault. The monologue came after allegations were made by psychology professor Christine Blasey Fordshe alleged that then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when she was a teenager.
“This is important,” Baldwin said in the clip. “I wanted to commemorate this pivotal moment in American history. When something like sexual assault, which is often just a shameful whisper, was made public on national television.”
Baldwin further discussed the woman who was assaulted and how Ford was hesitant to share her account. “We all have our stories – the spiked drinks, waking up on a cold hotel bathroom floor, the uncertainty, the shame, the thought ‘it must have been me,’ the silence, distrust and invalidation. This is a critical moment in America for all of us.”
Brooke Baldwin’s marriage and firing from CNN
Baldwin was fired from CNN in 2021. She said at the time that her departure was a personal choice. However, Baldwin revealed in a 2024 op-ed for Vanity Fair that she “couldn’t tell the whole truth” about why she quit.
She was fired by then-network president Jeff Zucker. Disagreement arose over the reassignment of Baldwin’s producers from her team. Additionally, she mentioned that she’s been “told a lot” because CNN has “become a male-dominated team.”
Baldwin married British producer James Fletcher in 2018, but they separated in 2023.
