A new Texas law, signed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday, bans non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) in cases involving sexual assault, child sexual abuse, and human trafficking and releases victims from existing NDAs in such cases.
State lawmakers had passed the bill at the end of May, after similar legislation passed in Missouri weeks earlier.
The laws are named in honor of Texas native Trey Carlock, who died by suicide when overcome by the trauma of an NDA related to sexual abuse at Kanakuk Kamps in Missouri, his sister Elizabeth Carlock Phillips has said while advocating for the legislation.
Texas and Missouri leaders are in a growing push to end the misuse of NDAs against abuse survivors who enter civil settlement agreements.
The use of NDAs to silence sexual abuse survivors makes such agreements controversial, Jeff Dalrymple, director of abuse prevention and response for the Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee, has told Baptist Press.
“In addition to legal considerations, ministry leaders should carefully consider both ethical and moral implications of NDA use. There may be situations in which an NDA could be an appropriate tool for a ministry to use, for instance, to protect the private information of ministry participants or in employment transitions,” Dalrymple said in April.
“However, they should never be used to prevent survivors of abuse from sharing their stories or to allow responsible parties to avoid responsibility for their actions.”
Jeff Leach, a Southern Baptist and member of Cottonwood Creek Church in Allen, was among five authors of the House version of the Texas bill.
Carlock sued Kanakuk after enduring what he described as a decade of child sexual abuse by then camp director Pete Newman, and accepted a civil settlement with a restrictive NDA that family members say led to Carlock’s 2019 suicide.
“I am proud to be Trey’s sister,” Phillips said when Texas was considering the bill, “and I hope Texas will be proud of Trey’s Law.”
Newman is serving two life sentences plus 30 years in a Missouri state prison for sexual crimes involving multiple minors at Kanakuk. Civil lawsuits are still being filed related to the abuse, most recently in April.
As Christianity Today previously reported:
Many child victims do not speak about what happened to them for decades. More than half of the victims of abuse in the Boy Scouts waited until they were 50 to disclose, according to Child USA. A 2014 German study found the average age for child sexual abuse survivors to disclose what happened to them is 52.
Most states have no laws limiting the use of NDAs. Since 2017, when the #MeToo movement started to bring attention to the problem of sexual harassment, several states have passed laws restricting the use of NDAs in the workplace.
In Maine, for example, the law now says an NDA can prevent disclosure of factual information “only if the agreement expressly provides for separate monetary consideration.” In Illinois, an NDA has to be the “documented preference of the employee” and “cannot use language that would completely prohibit employees from making truthful statements.” In Oregon, the victim of sexual assault has to ask for an NDA, and employers cannot make the request for an NDA a condition of a settlement offer.
Two states—California and Washington—now completely prohibit NDAs from covering sexual harassment or abuse but only for conflicts between employers and employees. NDAs may still be used in other legal settlements. There are no legal restrictions on settlements involving children.
Tennessee passed a bill in 2018 nullifying NDAs in childhood sexual abuse cases and is the only other state to have done so to date. But more than a dozen states have passed legislation limiting to varying degrees the use of NDAs in employer-employee settlement agreements regarding sexual abuse claims, the international law firm Ogletree Deakins reported, in addition to the federal 2022 Speak Out Act.
Trey’s law becomes effective August 28 in Missouri and September 1 in Texas.
Additional reporting by Christianity Today.
