Consider a typical scenario: a young woman is sexually harassed or assaulted by a powerful man at work. She musters the courage to lodge a complaint with the company, and it offers her a financial settlement. But there’s a string attached: she has to sign a nondisclosure agreement that bars her from ever telling anyone about the incident. For any of a host of reasons––she’s traumatized, feels humiliated, wants to forget it ever happened, fears she won’t be believed, worries about her career, needs the money––she agrees.
Meanwhile the company may privately censure her attacker. Perhaps it even terminates his employment. But it’s all done on the Q.T., so that the company’s reputation remains intact. But so does the attacker’s. While the next young woman remains clueless about what he’s done––until he does it again.
The pattern is the same whether the victims are young or old or in-between. Male, female or binary. The NDA is a shield turned into a sword.
In my new novel, Her, Too, Kelly McCann is the one who wields that sword. She’s a lawyer who’s built her career representing men accused of sexual assault. She defends them at trial when it goes that far, but in most cases she makes sure it will never go that far. When she gets that late-night call from her client––“Um, there’s been an incident”––she swoops in on the victim with a cheque in one hand and a nondisclosure agreement in the other. The NDA women, as she calls them, are silenced forever.
Her world is upended when she herself is raped––by her own client. She finds herself silenced, too, by the certainty that her brilliant career will be destroyed if she reveals that the man whose innocence she so vigorously proclaimed is in fact a serial rapist. Convinced that she can’t seek justice, she decides instead to seeks revenge, and she enlists the NDA women to help her.
Kelly has been silenced by her own life choices. The NDA women felt they had no choice, and that’s the danger Her, Too strives to expose. At a time when victims are at their most vulnerable, they’re persuaded––sometimes coerced—to maintain silence. For some of them, it may actually be a good deal. But for their attackers’ next victim, it never is.
Some small strides have been made to prevent institutions and corporations from imposing NDAs in these circumstances. Late last year, the United States enacted the Speak Out Act to limit the enforceability of NDAs––but only when the NDA is signed before any incident has occurred, e.g., in an employment contract. Earlier this year, Parliament passed a law that bans NDAs in relation to complaints of sexual misconduct, but the law applies only to higher education providers. This means that on both sides of the ocean, a business corporation is free to insist upon an NDA as an after-the-fact condition to settling a claim for sexual assault.
And in the case of private settlements between a victim and her wealthy assailant? Nothing prevents the enforceability of that NDA.
In Her, Too. Kelly’s client and soon-to-be attacker is a renowned scientist and owner of giant pharmaceutical company. He has money to spare, and thanks to Kelly, that money has silenced at least three of his previous victims. The police, the public, even his own company’s board, never learn anything of his crimes, leaving him free to attack again. The next time it’s Kelly.
Her NDA sword has boomeranged and stabbed her. She finally realizes the cost of silence when she herself must pay it.
Her, Too by Bonnie Kistler from Bedford Square and No Exit Press. On sale August 17, 2023.
Lawyer Kelly McCann, defends men accused of rape. She's fought to build a successful career as a criminal defence attorney, with a speciality in defending men accused of sex crimes - falsely accused, she always maintains. Her detractors call her a traitor to her gender, but she doesn't care: she loves to win. Kelly's most recent victory is securing an acquittal for a world-renowned scientist accused of sexually assaulting his female employees. But the thrill of her victory is short-lived. That very night she, too, becomes the victim of a brutal sexual assault. And almost as horrific as the attack is the fact that she can't tell anyone who the perpetrator is - not without destroying her career in the process. Kelly has never backed down from a fight and she's not about to start pulling her punches now. As she joins forces with her rapist's victims, for the first time it's not about winning these wronged women are out for justice and for revenge.
More information about Bonnie Kistler and her books can be found on her website. She can also be found on X @BonMot101 and on Instagram @bonmot101 and on Facebook.
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