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Investigators Voice Doubt on Camp Mystic's Reopening Plans; One-on-One with Brooke Nevils; Trump Hold Farewell Ceremony for Royal Couple. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired April 30, 2026 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:30:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: -- seven campers and counselors at the Texas Girls Camp, along with camp director Dick Eastland, lost their lives. And the body of eight-year-old Cile Stewart is still missing as the camp pushes to partially reopen in just weeks from now. Here's what her mother told lawmakers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CICI STEWARD, MOTHER OF MISSING EIGHT-YEAR-OLD CILE STEWARD: The Eastlands cavalierly insist, hey, we had a plan. You just didn't like it. Well, excuse my language, but damn right we didn't like it. Their so-called plan killed our daughters. Seven inches of rain, 12 inches of rain, four inches of rain, it does not matter. Shelter in place was a death sentence camouflaged as safety.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Joining us now is Brad Beckworth. He is representing the Stewart family in their lawsuit against Camp Mystic. Brad, thanks for coming on. First of all, how are the Stewarts doing in what has been days of draining emotional testimony?

BRAD BECKWORTH, LAWYER FOR THE STEWARD FAMILY: Good morning, Pam. Cici and Will are doing as well as you could expect. You know, they operate with a new baseline of what their new normal is. But it's tough. You know, every day they wake up just like my team does, and our primary focus is on helping them stand strong and bring Cile home. But the hearings were tough, just like our legal hearings were, because they're having to relive this, you know, ordeal every day. And I hope we're done with having to do that for a while, for sure.

BROWN: Absolutely. And you had the hearings with this lawsuit that you brought against the camp, and then you had these investigative hearings this past week. Do you and the Stewarts believe that Camp Mystic is in a position to safely reopen its Cypress Lake campus a month from today?

BECKWORTH: Absolutely not. You know, Cici said it very eloquently in her testimony. You can move this camp to Big Bend. You can move it to a mountaintop where there's no water. This family is not equipped to take care of children ever again. And there's a lot of reasons for that. You know, one of them is they've suffered their own trauma. You can visually see it. You can hear them talk about it. They're not well. They had a massive loss, and they bear the weight of 27 children dying on their watch when they should have been in their care and custody. And they still haven't overcome that.

And then if you had a chance to watch the legislative hearings or our four-day TRO hearing, this is a group of people that just defies regulation and authority. One of the most shocking things that we've heard so far is Britt Eastland saying that one of the reasons his father didn't join the American Camp Association, which deals with camp safety, was that he didn't like oversight. And he felt if you put too much regulation on them, then the fun would be gone and people would just stop coming.

And then we also have Mary Liz Eastland, my trial partner, Christina Yarnell, cross-examined her in our hearing. And it became very clear that as the health officer of that camp, she had never even read the statute that governed her responsibilities. And during that hearing, she admitted that she abandoned Cile. During the investigative committee hearings, she admitted that she still has not reported the deaths that happened at the camp, which is a requirement. And when she was pressed on it by Senator Kolkhorst, she said, look, you know what? That's also somebody else's responsibility. It's just not on me to do. So, I can give you 15 examples like that.

BROWN: Yes. Let me follow up on that because you bring up Mary Liz Eastland. She told lawmakers that her family would step away from running Camp Mystic if needed in order to reopen. We also heard the Eastland family apologize to the Heaven's 27 families and argue that state agencies had approved their one-sheet evacuation plan over many years. How do you respond?

BECKWORTH: Well, it was like watching an episode of " Succession" where Logan Roy used to say, these aren't serious people. They may be good people, but they're not serious people at running a business. The testimony we've heard shows that it was a group that operated with arrogance and complacency. And I don't believe that what she said is exactly how it was meant. I think what she was saying is, let us keep our money. And if we have to have somebody else step in to operate it, we might be willing to do that.

However, her brother-in-law, Britt Eastland, the family lawyer, very clearly walked that back. His brother, Richard Eastland, and him had a conflict during the hearing. Richard was saying, look, we might appeal this. We might take a year off. Britt said, we're not going to comment about that. There's clearly a disagreement about what the right thing is.

BROWN: And we have reached out to the Eastlands, and we're trying to get some more clarity on exactly what that plan might look like. We haven't heard back yet. Hundreds of families have registered their daughters to attend Camp Mystic this summer.

[10:35:00]

Some of them argue that the hindsight of this should not be the legal standard for the camp reopening. What do you and the stewards say to that?

BECKWORTH: Well, it's not hindsight. It's exactly the truth. Let me just start by saying that camp is not a right for someone to run, and it's not a right for someone to go to. It's a privilege, and it costs a lot of money. My daughters went to camp in the whole country. It was a formative part of their life.

In fact, our governor's daughter was the counselor to one of my daughters, and they have a lifelong friendship as a result. You can learn a lot of great things at camp, and we're all supportive of that, but you cannot put children in the care of someone who has killed 27 people. As Senator Kolkhorst said in the hearing, as I said in our hearings, if we had a nursery that killed one person in a daycare, they would probably be in jail. They certainly wouldn't be in business.

And so, here's where we are, Pam. The state has done an amazing job working as a bipartisan group here. Lieutenant Governor Patrick has been amazing in supporting these families. The investigative committee, bipartisan, amazing in their approach.

Here's where we are, though. The state, through DSHS, who's the regulatory agency, has got to make a decision about renewing this license. Everyone in that hearing told them, do not do it. They cannot approve this license. There are plenty of camps that will take these other girls. I know some of them, and you know what? Sometimes we have to step in for parents, too, and make tough decisions for them, and if they're not in the right mindset to do the right thing here, the state's going to have to do it for them.

BROWN: Well, we'll see what the state decides on that front. And I just want to note, as you know, the Eastlands and their attorney, Mikal Watts, maintain that it was the historic catastrophic flooding that killed these young girls, so this is ongoing. Of course, on this show, we're going to continue to monitor any developments on this front. Brad Beckwith, thank you so much.

And coming up, a CNN exclusive. I sit down with the first woman who came forward to say that she was sexually assaulted by Matt Lauer. The former Today Show anchor says their interactions were consensual. The conversation she wants to have about consent. It's part of a Situation Room special report, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:40:00]

BROWN: And turning now to a CNN exclusive. Brooke Nevils might be a name you've never heard of, but you might well recognize the name of the man she alleges sexually assaulted her. Matt Lauer. In 2014, while she was working as a talent assistant at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, Nevils alleges that she was sexually assaulted by then-Today Show co-anchor Lauer, who was married with children after a night of excessive drinking.

Their relationship continued when she returned to the U.S., a complex but common situation for a person in a subordinate position to find themselves in after an initial sexual encounter with a powerful person. Nevils submitted a complaint to NBC in November 2017 about the incident leading to Lauer's termination from the network. Lauer has never been charged with criminal wrongdoing and maintains that their relationship was a consensual one. CNN reached out to a representative for Lauer upon the release of this new book and did not hear back.

But that topic, consent, is one that Nevils says is still widely misunderstood and requires proper nuance in every interaction. She explores this dynamic and what it was like for her to come forward in her new book, "Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe."

And in her first sit-down interview for TV, Nevils told me what she learned from talking to dozens of experts in this space.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: How long did it take you to come to an understanding that what you went through was assault, that you were a victim?

BROOKE NEVILS, AUTHOR, "UNSPEAKABLE THINGS", FORMER NBC NEWS PRODUCER AND SEXUAL ASSAULT VICTIM ADVOCATE: Matt Lauer at that point at NBC could literally do no wrong. So, it was unthinkable to imagine that it could be anything other than a misunderstanding. When you're in a position of power over someone and you see someone who's young enough to be your daughter who is drunk and alone in a foreign country, the normal response is to want to protect them, to want to help them. It's not to try to take advantage of them. But because I was so steeped in this culture, it took me years to see that.

BROWN: You talk about consent, and I think that is such a key part of your book. And both you and Matt Lauer, you say what happened in terms of there were sexual relations on numerous occasions. In 2019, Lauer released a lengthy open letter. This was his first big response. And he says, the story Brooke tells is filled with false details intended only to create the impression this was an abusive encounter. Nothing could be further from the truth. There was absolutely nothing aggressive about that encounter. Brooke did not do or say anything to object. She certainly did not cry. She was a fully enthusiastic and willing partner. At no time did she behave in a way that made it appear she was incapable of consent. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted to do. The only concern she expressed was that someone might see her leaving my room. She embraced me at the door as she left. How do you respond to that?

[10:45:00]

NEVILS: Is that easy for me to hear? No. It's devastating. It makes me feel ashamed. But at the same time, I listened to that, and I can't believe I was ever alone in a room with that person.

When you are in a position when you are with a subordinate that you have personally witnessed drink for hours, you have paid for the drinks, when that person, as I did in my case, I wrote an email making jokes about how I was so drunk I couldn't open my hotel room door, it's hard to fathom how you could argue that you're completely unaware that someone's ability to consent might be compromised.

BROWN: Who do you envision as the readers of your book? Who were you writing for?

NEVILS: I remember what it felt like to read other women talking about what happened to them, to hear them saying things that I thought I had to have been the only one to have felt that way, to have been in that position, to have reacted that way. And that moment where you realize you're not alone, that changes everything.

BROWN: Because you really tackle the gray area head-on when it comes to sexual assault in this book.

NEVILS: The reality is the gray area is the norm. You think what happened to me can't possibly be a sexual assault because I didn't react the way a real rape victim did. Well, yes you did. We just have the wrong ideas about how victims react.

BROWN: Tell us more about that in terms of the expectations societally of how a victim should act versus the reality.

NEVILS: Our standards for victims in the aftermath of a sexual assault are impossibly high. We expect them to immediately recognize what happened as a sexual assault. When we know that's rarely what happens, these situations are confusing, they're devastating, and one of the most common reactions to it is denial. We expect them to immediately report what happened and to tell their stories consistently when, in fact, nobody tells the same story the same way every single time. It takes time to understand what happens to you to come to terms with it. And when we see victims doing that, we accuse them of being inconsistent. If they do tell the story the same way every time, then we say, oh, you're rehearsed. Let's talk a little bit more about the sense of control and trying to regain that. My job was to smooth things over for the talent.

So, I thought, this I know how to do. I can smooth this over. And so, I went back. And when I went back, the first thing that happened was he suggested I come meet him in his apartment. And when you're sitting in the dressing room of the anchor of the Today Show in Studio 1A, are you really in position to say no? Of course, you're not. And that just happened again and again.

And the most confusing part of it was that every single time I thought I was fixing it, I was taking back control. But really what I was doing was implicating myself in my own abuse. And then by the time I understood that I was trapped, I knew I was going to be blamed for all of it. And I blamed myself.

BROWN: In your journey trying to get to the truth, you ended up in a psych ward.

NEVILS: After I made my complaint, someone asked me how I was doing with the trauma of what had happened to And I was just like, I don't know what you're talking about. I have plenty of problems, but trauma isn't one of them. I'm fine. And saying you're fine is avoidance. That's a classic symptom of PTSD that I didn't recognize. It was not until nine months later when I had been outed by a tabloid, I took a leave of absence from my job that had essentially been my entire identity.

You know, as long as I was a producer at NBC, then I had to have been OK because I was doing this incredibly important, hard job that I loved. And all of a sudden, I wasn't fine anymore. I didn't want to live anymore. I couldn't live with myself anymore.

[10:50:00]

BROWN: Another thing you hear, the myths around being a victim of what society thinks is, oh, well, the woman regrets it. So, now she's saying she was raped because she cheated on a loved one. And so, she's calling it rape, even though it wasn't rape.

NEVILS: One of the ways that MeToo was not entirely successful is that it created an environment where it felt like you couldn't ask questions. It felt like you couldn't ask why victims go back, why they wait so long to report. We called out these powerful abusers, but then we didn't explain why that behavior was so problematic. And as a result of that, I think a lot of the reforms we made felt, frankly, arbitrary and stupid to a lot of people, which sort of invited the backlash that we're seeing now.

BROWN: And you make clear that not every man's a predator. There have been false allegations made, which of course hurts the movement altogether, right?

NEVILS: It shouldn't be, believe all women all the time. It should be, stop disbelieving victims for the wrong reasons.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: An extended version of my conversation with Brooke will be on CNN's YouTube page this afternoon. And we should note that if you are a sexual assault victim or are struggling with news about sexual violence, you can find help by calling the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-HOPE or visiting R-A-I-N-N, rainn.org. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news happening right now over at the White House. President Trump and the first lady, they're saying farewell to King Charles and Queen Camilla with the royal couple wrapping up their state visit to the United States.

[10:55:00]

There you see some pictures just moments ago at the departure ceremony that's at the South Portico over at the White House.

CNN Royal Correspondent Max Foster is in Virginia, where the king and the queen will be making several stops today before actually heading home. What's on their agenda, Max? MAX FOSTER, CNN ROYAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're coming to the White House. They're coming to the White House for a block party. They wanted to come to Main Street, they called it. So, we've got a small town in Virginia.

Check out the turnout. This is a queue going into the high street. Line story. I keep being corrected. It's a lie. So, that's the entrance into the high street. And then it goes up there all around the corner, literally for -- how far would we say it, you know, a mile or two? Everyone turning out. Everyone pretty excited.

One lady told me it's the biggest thing since 1944 when Bing Crosby came to town. Here are a few other thoughts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I mean, what a chance to see the king and queen. I mean, I wouldn't miss it. I live 20 minutes away. So, once in a lifetime opportunity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's just an honor that they're coming to Front Royal. It's a small town. Who would have ever thought that the king and queen of the United Kingdom would come to Front Royal?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I've not been to England yet. So, this is the closest I've got so far. When we heard they were coming to Front Royal, we thought, well, that's appropriate, right? It's a royal town. And so, we're just excited.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: It's an appropriately named town, obviously. Before they come here, though, there's going to be a somber moment remembering the fallen. And then later on, there'll be an event, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, there's still some ceremonial goodbyes that are about to take place. I want to bring in our presidential historian, Tim Naftali, who's joining us. Tim, King Charles has stressed the military and cultural ties between Britain and the United States during the course of his visit here. How do you think that's resonating with President Trump?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, I think you can tell from President Trump's manner that it's resonating very well with him. I mean, President Trump doesn't usually hide how he actually feels about how things are going. And I get the sense from the pictures we're seeing today, but more importantly, from the way he reacted to the king's toasts at the state dinner, that the president isn't very much enjoying this trip. And I think that says a lot for Charles' delicate balancing act.

The king is not simply the head of state of the United Kingdom, he's the head of state of 15 countries. And in some of those countries, there are quite a few people in those countries who very much don't like Donald Trump. They love America, but they don't like Trump. So, the king had to find a way to be a good guest, to show respect to the American people and to the American people's elected head of state, while also not doing anything that might compromise the self-respect of people living in Canada, Australia or even the United Kingdom, let alone other countries. And he did.

He managed to find a way with wit, charm and intelligence to remind Americans, but also our president, of the basic enduring values, some of which you might associate with Tory Britain, but values that go stretched back to the Magna Carta. And I think he just found that perfect pitch during this trip. And as a result, the president and anybody else who's encountered him or listened to him is quite impressed.

BLITZER: Yes, all of us were totally impressed. Max, let me go back to you. After he leaves the White House, he's there right now. The king is expected to lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery, where many of the country's war dead are buried. Yesterday, he visited the 9/11 memorial in New York City. What do you make of the king's decision to visit these sites while here in the United States? An American president that normally would go to those sites, but it's this British monarch who's there.

FOSTER: Standing shoulder to shoulder, really, for all the ways in which Americans have suffered, but also making the point at 9/11 that many thousand -- many Brits died as well, and particularly in the war in Afghanistan that followed standing shoulder to shoulder with America in the response.

It was interesting, on the thoughts I was just hearing there, I spoke to a Portuguese person in London yesterday, and what she said to me is the speech was so incredible because it spoke for the rest of the world. And I think that's a sort of an abiding feeling outside America, looking in on that speech. Completely unexpected that a monarch would be delivering that democratic address to Congress and that very pointed remark about holding checks on the executive, I don't think that was actually pointed at the president, I think that was pointed at Congress like, do your job.

BLITZER: Important point indeed. All right.

[11:00:00]