Sean “Diddy” Com’s arrest and retrial of Harvey Weinstein puts NDAs back in legal spotlight – Guest Column

Editor’s note: Nearly a decade after they helped bring down Roger Ailes, former Fox News hosts Gretchen Carlson and Julie Roginsky are being silenced to varying degrees by nondisclosure agreements about what happened at the Rupert Murdoch company. As the likes of Harvey Weinstein and Sean “Diddy” Combs face new sex crime charges in court, the co-founders of Lift Our Voices are calling for new momentum for the #MeToo movement and preventing predators from targeting survivors. keeping crimes out of the public eye. .

With the recent indictment of Sean “Diddy” Combs, yet another high-profile man has been credibly accused of horrific sexual assault and misconduct, paving the way for another major industry to have its #MeToo moment.

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We’ve been here before.

In July 2016, one of us, Gretchen, became the first to file a sexual harassment complaint against then-Fox News CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes, beginning a reckoning over the way women had been treated by one of the most powerful men in the media.

In April 2017, one of us, Julie, filed another lawsuit against Fox News and Ailes, also alleging sexual harassment and retaliation. That same day the New York Times broke a devastating story about how many women had allegedly been sexually harassed by Fox’s biggest star, Bill O’Reilly, and how they had been silenced through forced arbitration and non-disclosure agreements, allowing the host to continue working while these women were pushed out of the door. O’Reilly was out of Fox less than three weeks later.

Six months later, in October, news broke of Harvey Weinstein’s decades-long abuse of women unlucky enough to cross paths with him.

Other high-profile stories followed: about Matt Lauer, Les Moonves and a number of more powerful and famous men who were quickly pushed out the door after allegations of toxic behavior came to light. It seemed like Hollywood and the media were finally having their day of reckoning over the widespread mistreatment of women in those industries.

And yet.

Some men whose demise was celebrated during the height of the #MeToo movement have been welcomed with open arms.

Take O’Reilly, whose conduct at Fox forced the network to pay tens of millions of dollars to settle with women who alleged he engaged in widespread sexual misconduct. One of those women, a former producer named Andrea Mackris, left Fox News in 2004 with a settlement and a non-disclosure agreement. Nearly twenty years later, in the midst of the #MeToo movement, she gave a moving interview to the Daily beast, detailing her alleged abuse; the settlement negotiations that forced her to sign a non-disclosure agreement; and even her mistreatment by male journalists, who went after her for daring to come forward.

Earlier this year, Mackris was forced to pay O’Reilly nearly $100,000 in fees for an arbitration proceeding he initiated to enforce her 2004 non-disclosure agreement. She was once again silenced, as she has been for two decades, except for a brief moment when she apparently assumed it was finally safe to share her own story.

Most, if not all, of the women O’Reilly allegedly harassed never worked in television news again.

Meanwhile, O’Reilly has become a fixture on TV again — even appearing back on Fox to plug one of his books just six months after his departure. Since then, O’Reilly has routinely made the rounds on every cable news network except MSNBC. Aside from a recent interview by Margaret Hoover of PBS — who, in a feat of journalistic excellence, repeatedly pressed O’Reilly on his treatment of women — not a single anchor on CNN, NewsNation or elsewhere has asked him directly about the tens of millions dollars in payouts to his alleged victims, or why he should get a comeback.

O’Reilly’s recent resurrection in the media is just one of countless comebacks that many male celebrities have enjoyed since being canceled at the height of the #MeToo movement.

As we approach what many consider the seven-year anniversary of the #MeToo movement, it is clear that we still have work to do as a society to ensure that survivors are protected and empowered to speak out against toxic conduct and justice, and that sexual predators get much more than just a public slap on the wrist.

Through our nonprofit Lift Our Voices, we have worked tirelessly to enforce a permanent reckoning for those who engage in workplace poisoning. Thanks to our two bipartisan laws, the Ending Forced Arbitration for Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act and our Speak Out Act, survivors of sexual misconduct are no longer automatically forced into the secret chamber of arbitration or into silence. But as we often say, changing the law – as difficult as it is in these hyper-partisan times – is still easier than changing the culture.

With each passing week, the allegations against Combs become more disturbing, including a recent report here at Deadline that his legal team is trying to bully his alleged sexual assault victims by forcing the disclosure of their names. While these claims, if proven at trial, are as heinous and devastating as anything Harvey Weinstein has been convicted of, we must remain vigilant and ensure that the red carpet is not rolled out for abusers when the proverbial dust settles. years from now.

To be clear, one of the reasons Combs was supposedly able to rob so many people is the widespread use of non-disclosure agreements, which left survivors fearing they would be sued into oblivion by a wealthy and powerful man if they spoke out. .

This is what silencing mechanisms do: they try to intimidate and isolate. One attorney noted that the non-disclosure agreements that Combs routinely handed out may have been “the broadest non-disclosure agreement(s)” he had ever seen. But the Combs NDAs were not particularly unusual in size. Politicians on both sides of the aisle — from three-time Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy — have used similarly elaborate nondisclosure agreements to cover up toxic behavior. Organizations and individuals that are not nearly as well known have also used them to prevent the exposure of inappropriate and illegal behavior.

Combs isn’t the only musician who has abused less powerful women, just as Weinstein isn’t the only producer who has preyed on women in Hollywood and Ailes isn’t the only executive who has harassed women in the media. If we are serious about holding bad actors accountable, we must stop making examples of a few high-profile abusers while allowing so many others to rehabilitate themselves right before our eyes on national television.

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