Confidentiality agreements restricting disclosure

Confidentiality agreements restricting disclosure are settlement terms that constrain the circulation of information about harassment claims. In the cases examined in the book, their reach could extend well beyond keeping a settlement amount private: agreements restricted claimants’ speech, access to evidence, cooperation with other women, and ability to answer journalists. They could offer a route to compensation and a private resolution, yet also prevent information about recurring allegations from reaching people who might need it. The central tension is not simply whether an individual settlement benefits a claimant, but how the terms can distribute privacy and risk between the parties while leaving outsiders uninformed.

Terms and Operation

The agreements investigated by Emily Steel in connection with Bill O'Reilly and Fox News illustrate how extensive the restrictions could be. Women were required to surrender evidence, including recordings, diaries, emails, and backup files. Some terms barred them, and in one instance their attorneys as well, from assisting other women with similar claims. If a subpoena required a claimant to speak, she had to notify O'Reilly’s side, which could then contest her being called to testify. In another agreement, an attorney undertook to advise O'Reilly on sexual-harassment matters, while a claimant was prohibited from making disparaging statements about O'Reilly or Fox News and from responding to journalists. That agreement also recorded that she had not filed a complaint with relevant government agencies.

The financial terms made the silence consequential. One woman received about $9 million and another $3.25 million; breaching the restrictions could mean losing the payment. The settlement thus joined compensation to continuing obligations about speech and evidence. These reported terms describe particular agreements, not a finding about the underlying allegations or a conclusion that every clause was legally enforceable. Their importance in the reporting was that a private payment could close off sources of information even when questions about the conduct remained unresolved publicly.

A second example came from Zelda Perkins and Rowena Chiu, former Miramax employees who sought legal advice after leaving the company. Their lawyers advised them to pursue a settlement rather than assume that criminal proceedings would follow. The women had no physical evidence and had not contacted police in Venice; they were also confronting Harvey Weinstein and a company then owned by Disney. They initially objected to receiving money and wanted any payment donated to charity, but were told that Weinstein’s lawyers were unlikely to negotiate without a financial demand. After a prolonged negotiation, each woman received £125,000 and agreed to substantial restrictions.

The terms described by Perkins showed how those restrictions entered ordinary life. She could not discuss her time at Miramax, and a medical professional she consulted would have to sign a confidentiality agreement. She could not be fully candid with her accountant about the payment, and the settlement recorded whom she had already told about her departure and what she had disclosed. It also barred her from speaking to media, including media that might come into existence later, and required her to assist in preventing or limiting further disclosure if information got out. The restriction was therefore not confined to an interview or a newspaper article; it reached professional advice, personal disclosure, and the management of future exposure.

Why Claimants Settled

The reporting presents settlements as choices made under constraint, not as evidence that a claimant lacked a serious concern or simply preferred silence. Attorneys described confidentiality terms as standard practice. Women might need the money, want privacy, see no better option, or wish to move on without being labeled a tattletale, a liar, a flirt, or a habitual litigant. Taking a harassment claim to court could be punishing, while a settlement could appear more certain. These motives could coexist: an agreement might answer an immediate financial or personal need while exacting a cost in what the claimant could say afterward.

The legal framework described in the reporting helps explain that calculation. Federal protections did not cover every worker: freelancers and employees at workplaces with fewer than fifteen workers were among those left outside the stated coverage. The filing period could be as short as 180 days, and federal damages were capped at $300,000, an amount that might not replace lost earnings or attract an effective lawyer. Against those limits, private settlement could seem more attainable than litigation. The reporting does not suggest that every claimant faced identical circumstances; it shows why the agreement could be a practical option even when its restrictions were severe.

The structure also created incentives for attorneys. Many worked on contingency, receiving payment only if their client received an award, with fees often taking at least a third of it. A loss in court might yield no fee. Some attorneys challenged harsh provisions, while others accepted or negotiated them in pursuit of a larger settlement. The arrangement could therefore generate compensation for a claimant and a fee for counsel without producing a public account of the alleged conduct. The private resolution addressed the immediate dispute while potentially leaving the broader pattern unexamined.

Information, Institutions, and Consequences

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission formed part of the same information problem. Although it was responsible for enforcing federal sexual-harassment law, it had limited enforcement authority and, under its mandate, was required to settle when possible. Its settlements were often confidential. Chai Feldblum, then an EEOC commissioner, explained that the agency knew which companies had the most charges but could not make that information public. A prospective employee therefore could not use the agency to check an employer’s harassment record. Information collected by public agencies with taxpayer funds could remain inaccessible to the people who might use it to assess workplace risk.

The consequences of private agreements could also persist after the settlement itself. Perkins was not permitted to keep a complete copy of her paperwork; she could consult a copy at her lawyer’s office, and the pages she later showed Jodi Kantor were excerpts assembled from what she had been given. Perkins and Chiu had matching agreements whose confidentiality terms implied that they could not discuss the matter with each other. Their settlement was dated October 23, 1998, only weeks after the events in Venice. Perkins later described feeling broken and disillusioned; she could not explain her abrupt departure from a prominent company to prospective employers, concluded that her film career was over, and went to Guatemala to train horses. She had negotiated for Weinstein to attend therapy and had chosen a therapist, but could not make the sessions happen and eventually gave up.

The book places these individual terms within a wider pattern: claimants routinely surrendered the right to discuss their own experiences, while alleged harassers could move on without the same information becoming available to others. The result was an asymmetry. A settling claimant might receive money but lose the ability to warn, corroborate, or assist; a future employee could encounter the same workplace without access to the earlier complaint; and the public might not see the agreements that explained how the silence was maintained. The arrangements were rarely examined in law-school classrooms or open court, helping keep the mechanism itself obscure.

Public Scrutiny and Significance

The reporting turns confidentiality from a technical feature of settlement paperwork into a subject of investigation. Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey asked whether such clauses were lawful, how widely they were used, and whether the lawyers handling harassment cases were confronting the problem or helping produce settlements that rewarded silence. Their inquiry connected the terms found in O'Reilly-related agreements with accounts such as Perkins’s, making visible both the clauses’ practical reach and the choices surrounding them. The evidence did not make every settlement identical; it showed how secrecy could recur across distinct cases.

Perkins’s later willingness to present fragments of her agreement to a reporter also exposed the contradiction at the heart of the arrangement: a document designed to prevent disclosure could itself become evidence of how disclosure was controlled. Her public account became part of a broader challenge to confidential settlements, while the original restrictions had limited what she could retain, say, and explain for years. In the book’s analysis, confidentiality agreements are therefore not merely private promises between parties. They are instruments that can provide an individual route to compensation while restricting the information needed to recognize repeated allegations, evaluate employers, and hold institutions accountable.