‘Inappropriate’ – as Curry claims: I warned execs

Matt Lauer broke his silence Friday, five months after he was accused of sex assault, to admit he “acted inappropriately” — while former TV co-host Ann Curry claimed she flagged his lurid behavior to execs years ago.

Lauer said in a statement that while he accepted blame for his actions, it was time to pipe up on the “many false stories from anonymous or biased sources” about him.

“I remained silent in an attempt to protect my family from further embarrassment and to restore a small degree of the privacy they have lost. But defending my family now requires me to speak up,” the former NBC “Today” show host said.

“I fully acknowledge that I acted inappropriately as a husband, father and principal at NBC. However, I want to make it perfectly clear that any allegations or reports of coercive, aggressive or abusive actions on my part, at any time, are absolutely false.”

The former longtime host, 60, was dropped from NBC in November after what the network called a “detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace.”

The dad of three has been accused, among other things, of inviting a woman into his office and pulling out his penis and giving a female colleague a sex toy with an explicit note about how he wanted to use it on her.

Another woman told The Washington Post that Lauer exposed himself and asked her to touch him, and a second said she had midday sex with him in his office.

Some NBC staffers said their sexual relationships with Lauer were consensual.

Also speaking publicly about the scandal for the first time, Curry, 61, told The Washington Post that she told two NBC executives in 2012 to watch out for Lauer.

“I told management they had a problem and they needed to keep an eye on him and how he deals with women,” Curry said.

She said a female staffer approached her, saying she had been “sexually harassed physically” by Lauer and needed help.

“She was afraid of losing her job,” Curry recalled. “I believed her.”

Curry wouldn’t divulge the names of the higher-ups to whom she talked about Lauer, and NBC said that it had no record of her warning and that there was no mention of it in Lauer’s personnel file.

Curry, who spent 15 years at “Today” before she was booted off in 2012 amid poor ratings, expressed general sympathy for victims of sexual assault in the workplace.

Rumors swirled that Lauer and Curry were at each other’s throats while working on “Today.” The two hosts (pictured) didn’t speak to each other for years after Curry’s public axing. She left NBC News three years later. She lamented that the very company workers who are supposed to help victims may be perpetrators themselves.

“This is one of the problems when we talk about corporations with an HR department being under leadership of someone who might or might not be accused,” Curry said.

“How are they going to complain about it if they are accusing someone who is overseeing the department that is supposed to protect them? Do you have a system that allows those who feel they have been victimized to air their complaints without fear they will lose their jobs? I don’t know a company that does.”