The Contributing Role Of Non-Disclosure Agreements In Workplace Sexual Assault
Hiba Hafiz, a writer for The Atlantic, wrote an article named “How Legal Agreements Can Silence Victims of Workplace Sexual Assault”. The article goes into the depths of the legal agreements and laws that can silence victims of workplace sexual assaults. The article starts off giving an example about the sexual harassment scandal done by Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein had had various accounts of sexual harassment in the workplace, and was allegedly harassing young assistants, temps, employees, and executives at the Weinstein Company and Miramax. One of the many reasons Weinstein was able to get away with these harassments through some specific laws that prevented women from coming out to the public about the scandals. Then the article asks the question “Did the law help expose the abuse or push it deeper into the shadows?”.
To answer that question the law did push sexual harassment scandals deeper into the shadows and just about nothing is being done to fix the problem. Hafiz mentions a lot of problems that cause the effect as to how legal agreements can silence victims of workplace sexual assault but she never goes into a deep meaning of how to fix the problem. The reasons why this major problem is not being fixed is due to Non-Disclosure Agreements, the EEOC not having any funding, and workers not being ensured of their right to share information. Non-Disclosure Agreements are agreements where two or more parties make an agreement that certain information will be maintained in secrecy. NDA’s have a set of laws surrounding them based on what parties are allowed to say and not say. These sets of laws in NDA’s are pushing sexual harassment scandals deeper in the shadows.
State courts and legislators are slowly trying to pass bills to restrict the use by private employers of nondisclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases. 16 states this year, in 2018, have introduced bills to restrict the use by private employers, while provisions of the bill have become law in Vermont, Maryland, Washington, New York, Tennessee, and Arizona. NDA’s should have changed guidlines as to when they can and cannot be broken. In cases when their are sexual harassments women should be able to come right out and not have the fear of coming out. Women should not have to think about taking such a big risk of repaying all the money they were guarenteed. It’s just horribly wrong to think about how a NDA can keep women sitting in silence after sexual harassment takes place.
The United States could go one of two ways with the problem of NDA’s. The United States could keep trying to pass bills to make provisions of NDA’s or the United States could just put a ban on NDA’s so the problem would be minimized rather than not having a chance to help the people were trying to protect. If the United States were to ban NDA’s and terminate all chances of being sued or getting in trouble when coming out against sexual offenders, women or men would be more likely to come out with allegations against those sexual offenders. The end result that matters most to victims in the United States is that they feel free to come out and seek justice.
