Confidentiality-based silencing of harassment claims

Confidentiality-based silencing of harassment claims describes how settlement agreements can turn a private resolution into a barrier against public knowledge. In the book, secrecy is not merely an incidental clause: it can prevent complainants from discussing their own experiences, restrict the use of evidence, and leave employers and the public unaware of allegations that might reveal recurring conduct. The arrangement offers money and privacy to an individual while potentially preserving the conditions in which another person can be harmed.

How the settlements work

The reporting on Bill O'Reilly and Fox News gave Emily Steel a concrete starting point. Settlements were already a familiar feature of sexual-harassment cases, but the agreements she examined imposed restrictions well beyond a simple payment. Women could be required to surrender audio recordings, diaries, emails, backup files, and other evidence to O'Reilly and his lawyers. Some provisions barred them, and in one case their attorneys, from helping other women with similar claims. If a subpoena compelled testimony, they had to notify O'Reilly's team, which could attempt to prevent them from being called.

Other terms extended silence into everyday life. One woman's lawyer agreed to provide legal advice to O'Reilly on sexual-harassment matters. Another woman was prohibited from making disparaging statements about O'Reilly or Fox News, whether directly or indirectly, in writing or speech, and from responding to journalists. She also confirmed that she had not filed a complaint with government agencies responsible for addressing harassment. One woman received about $9 million and another $3.25 million; violating the terms could cost either woman her settlement. The allegations and evidence were thereby placed beyond ordinary public scrutiny, even though the size of the payments made the arrangements consequential rather than marginal.

Why silence became a standard bargain

Lawyers told Jodi Kantor that such restrictive provisions were not exceptional. They were standard practice and often among the few routes available to women seeking a resolution. The reasons to sign were practical: a complainant might need money, want privacy, see no better option, or simply wish to move on without being branded a liar, a flirt, a tattletale, or a habitual litigant. A court case could be punishing and uncertain. Federal protections left out some workers, including freelancers and employees of workplaces with fewer than fifteen people; the federal filing period could be as short as 180 days, and damages were capped at $300,000. Settlements could therefore seem more reliable than litigation, even when they required a woman to give up the ability to tell her story.

The same structure also rewarded lawyers for concluding cases. Attorneys commonly worked on contingency and took at least a third of an award, while losing at trial could mean no fee. Some resisted especially severe clauses; others accepted them or yielded in order to secure a larger settlement. The result was a cottage industry in which an agreement could compensate a client and at the same time suppress information about the conduct that prompted the payment.

Public agencies did not necessarily provide a counterweight. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission often kept settlements confidential and had limited enforcement authority; its mandate directed it to settle where possible. The agency could hold information about companies facing numerous charges yet be barred from making those records public. A prospective employee consequently could not use that information to assess an employer's harassment record. In the reporters' account, public resources could gather valuable evidence only for much of it to remain inaccessible. The secrecy therefore extended beyond the private parties: it affected what future workers, journalists, and the public could learn.

The pattern in individual cases and workplaces

The settlement reached by Zelda Perkins and Rowena Chiu shows how secrecy could shape even the process of seeking help. After the two former Miramax employees found lawyers in London, they expected criminal proceedings. Instead, their lawyers advised them that, without physical evidence or a police report from Venice, a settlement was the practical course against Harvey Weinstein and a company then owned by Disney. They initially rejected the idea of personal compensation and wanted money donated to charity, hoping that this would create a public warning. They were told that Weinstein's lawyers were unlikely to negotiate without a financial demand.

Perkins then proposed conditions aimed at changing workplace practices, including therapy for Weinstein, a harassment policy and training at Miramax, and consequences if another similar allegation arose within two years. The eventual agreements paid Perkins and Chiu £125,000 each but imposed extraordinary restrictions. Perkins was not allowed to discuss her time at Miramax, and even a medical professional she consulted would have to sign a confidentiality agreement. The agreement recorded whom she had already told, in categories rather than names after she resisted naming them, and barred her from speaking to any media, including future media. If the agreement was disclosed, she was required to assist in efforts to prevent further disclosure or mitigate its effects. She could not keep a complete copy; she had only limited access to the document through her lawyer. Chiu had a matching agreement. The terms did not merely conceal a settlement from outsiders: they constrained how the women could preserve, revisit, and recount what had happened.

Other evidence in the book shows how a culture of silence could operate before any settlement was signed. After Emily Nestor reported that Weinstein had repeatedly pursued her during a breakfast meeting, employees recorded her account, but she did not want to file a formal human-resources complaint. Company executives, advised by outside counsel, questioned whether the board could be told without an official complaint. At dinner, Irwin Reiter's daughter Shari urged him to act, arguing that his position gave him both power and an obligation to help create conditions in which women could speak. Reiter feared for employees' safety, but also recognized the risk that complainants would be blamed. Lauren O'Connor later filed a detailed complaint describing a broader workplace pattern. The response from human resources to her concern about Weinstein's verbal abuse was, in her account, effectively that the company would act if he physically crossed a line. Her complaint eventually seemed to disappear, and she left the company with little explanation.

Resistance, reform, and the cost of speaking

The book also traces the system beyond individual agreements. Gloria Allred, publicly associated with giving women a voice, had herself negotiated confidential settlements, including one with O'Reilly and one involving gymnast McKayla Moroney. Her firm had also negotiated a 2004 settlement with Harvey Weinstein's alleged victim, Ashley Matthau. In California, consumer lawyers and legislator Connie Leyva considered a bill that would have barred confidentiality clauses in sexual-harassment settlements and allowed future victims to name perpetrators. Allred opposed the proposal, asserting that harassers would not pay without silence and threatening to travel to the state capitol to fight it. The lawyers believed that her public standing could overwhelm the proposal; Leyva withdrew, and reform stopped before the bill was introduced. The episode shows how the existing settlement model could be defended not only by those accused of misconduct, but also by an influential advocate whose reputation made opposition especially consequential.

The book's later gathering of women who had spoken about harassment and assault reveals both the damage done by silence and the unequal costs of breaking it. The women came from very different circumstances: Kim Lawson was earning $10 an hour at McDonald's and had been homeless six months earlier, while the details of Gwyneth Paltrow's comfortable home made economic differences visible around the table. Lawson described filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and taking part in a September strike, where she spoke, gave interviews, and pushed her daughter in a stroller. She had become a source of advice to other workers organizing through a text chain. Zelda Perkins, once restricted by a settlement, described gaining a sense of authority through activism and speaking publicly about confidentiality agreements.

Rowena Chiu, by contrast, had not yet made her story public. She said that, apart from her husband, her family knew nothing, and that she had little practice telling the story. She also described the pressure on Asian women within a model-minority culture to avoid making a fuss, and said that speaking out could shock friends and alter her life. Her hesitation makes plain that the end of a restrictive agreement, or the existence of a supportive gathering, does not erase the personal and cultural risks of disclosure.

Across these cases, confidentiality operates as an information system as much as a legal term. A settlement can offer an individual a route to money and privacy, while withholding evidence from colleagues, regulators, and potential future complainants. The recurrence of similar restrictions, the limited reach of official enforcement, and the failure of proposed reform help explain why private settlements could mute claims without stopping the behavior they were meant to resolve. The later acts of testimony and collective organizing do not undo that history, but they contest its central effect: the isolation of each person who might otherwise have learned that others had faced the same pattern.