Can an NDA Silence a Sexual Abuse Survivor? Trey's Law, the Speak Out Act, and Your Right to Tell Your Story

Among the quiet questions survivors carry, one comes up again and again: “If I bring a case, will I be legally forbidden from ever talking about what happened to me?” For many survivors the fear is not hypothetical. They were handed a document years ago — after a settlement, a payout, or a private resolution with a church, a school, a camp, or an employer — and told, in effect, never to speak of it again. Some have carried that silence for a decade or more, unsure whether a page they signed as a frightened young person still has power over them today.

In 2026 the legal ground under that fear is shifting, and it is shifting in survivors' favor. A wave of new laws — at both the state and federal level — is stripping enforceability from the nondisclosure agreements that were once used to keep abuse hidden. This guide explains, in plain language, what those agreements are, the crucial difference between confidentiality that protects a survivor and confidentiality that protects an institution, and what a survivor should know if they have already signed one. It is written for survivors and the people who stand beside them. It is not a pitch, and it does not promise any outcome.

What a Nondisclosure Agreement Actually Is

A nondisclosure agreement — often called an NDA or a confidentiality clause — is a promise, usually written into a settlement, that one or both sides will not talk publicly about a dispute or its terms. In everyday business they are ordinary and unremarkable. In the context of sexual abuse, though, the same tool has too often been used for a very different purpose: to buy a survivor's silence and, with it, to keep an abuser's conduct and an institution's failures out of public view. When several survivors of the same abuser are each quietly bound to silence, no one learns that the others exist, and a pattern that should have been exposed stays buried.

That is the harm the new laws are aimed at. Understanding them starts with separating two things that often get lumped together but could not be more different.

Two Very Different Kinds of Confidentiality

Not all privacy in a survivor's case is the same, and this distinction is the heart of everything that follows.

Read side by side, the difference is stark. One kind of confidentiality is a shield a survivor can raise or lower at will. The other is a gag imposed on the survivor for someone else's benefit. The reforms sweeping through statehouses and Congress are not erasing survivors' privacy — they are ending the practice of using “confidentiality” as a synonym for silence.

Trey's Law — Why It Exists

Much of the current momentum traces to a single law with a name: Trey's Law. It is named in memory of Trey Carlock, a young man from Dallas who was sexually abused as a child at a summer camp. As part of resolving his civil case, he was bound by a nondisclosure agreement. Trey died by suicide at the age of 28. His family — his sister, Elizabeth Phillips, chief among them — has since channeled their grief into a national effort to end the use of these agreements against survivors, so that no one else is forced to carry both the weight of abuse and the weight of enforced silence.

The law that carries his name does one focused thing: it makes nondisclosure agreements void and unenforceable when they are used in civil settlements to prevent a survivor from disclosing child sexual abuse, sexual assault, or trafficking, or the facts surrounding it. In plain terms, a survivor covered by such a law cannot be legally punished for telling their own story.

Where Trey's Law Stands in 2026

What began as one family's advocacy has become one of the fastest-moving survivor-rights reforms in the country. As of mid-2026, a version of Trey's Law had been enacted in seven states, with more considering it and a federal bill advancing in Congress.

• Texas passed its version (Senate Bill 835) with bipartisan support, effective September 1, 2025.
• Missouri — the state where the camp at the center of Trey Carlock's case operated — enacted its version effective August 28, 2025.
• Several more states followed in 2026, including Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana, alongside earlier measures counted in California and Tennessee.

A critical detail varies from state to state: retroactivity. Some 2026 versions were written to apply retroactively, meaning they can free survivors who already signed a nondisclosure agreement years ago. Others apply only to agreements entered after the law's effective date. This is why no survivor should assume, from a headline alone, that an old agreement they signed is now void — or that it still binds them. The answer turns on which state's law governs the agreement and how that particular statute was written.

The Speak Out Act — What Federal Law Already Does

Trey's Law is not the first federal-level effort on this front. On December 7, 2022, the Speak Out Act became federal law. It makes pre-dispute nondisclosure and non-disparagement clauses judicially unenforceable when the underlying dispute involves sexual assault or sexual harassment. In practice, that reaches the kind of clause buried in an employment contract or onboarding paperwork that a worker signs long before anything has happened — a clause an employer might later try to use to keep a survivor quiet.

The Speak Out Act is meaningful, but survivors should understand its limits so they are not misled by a partial summary elsewhere:

• It applies to clauses agreed to before a dispute arises. It generally does not reach a confidentiality provision negotiated as part of settling a claim that has already been made.
• It is centered on the workplace context of sexual assault and sexual harassment.
• It works alongside — and does not replace — state protections. This is exactly the gap that state Trey's Laws, which target the settlement NDA itself, are written to close.

Read together, the two reforms cover different ground: the Speak Out Act addresses the clause signed at the start, and Trey's Law addresses the clause signed at the end. That is why the state and federal efforts are complementary rather than duplicative.

If You Already Signed an NDA

For survivors who resolved a case years ago and were told never to speak of it, the developments of 2025 and 2026 may feel like a door reopening. It sometimes is. But two cautions matter, and both point in the same direction.

First, do not assume you are still bound — a retroactive law in the right state may already have rendered your clause unenforceable. Second, do not simply breach the agreement on your own on the strength of a news article. Whether an old clause still has legal force depends on which state's law applies, whether that state has enacted a Trey's Law, whether that law reaches back to existing agreements, and precisely what your document says. Guessing wrong in either direction carries real consequences. The safe, and free, first step is to have the actual document read by a lawyer who handles survivor cases, in a confidential conversation, before you say or do anything based on it.

How a Survivor-Focused Lawyer Handles Confidentiality

How a firm treats confidentiality tells a survivor a great deal about whose interests it is serving. As Alex Alvarez, Managing Partner and a Board Certified Civil Trial Lawyer, frames it, a resolution should never require a survivor to bury the truth of what happened to them in order to protect the very institution that failed to protect them. Guarding a survivor's identity and privacy is one thing, and the firm fights for it. Silencing the survivor for an institution's benefit is another thing entirely — and it is increasingly something the law will not enforce.

That distinction also shapes how these cases are built. Nondisclosure agreements have long been paired with a second institutional tactic: keeping the underlying records out of sight. Herb Borroto, M.D., J.D., the firm's Medical-Legal Expert, reviews clinical and institutional records the way few lawyers can — reading them for the details that reveal what an organization actually knew, and when, beneath the surface of what it later agreed to keep quiet. Confidentiality clauses and hidden records are two sides of the same coin, and the modern reforms are aimed at prying both open. We describe how discovery surfaces those records in our guide on how institutions hide sexual abuse and what the records reveal.

Common Questions

Can a nondisclosure agreement legally stop a sexual abuse survivor from speaking about their abuse?

Increasingly, no. A growing number of laws make these nondisclosure agreements void and unenforceable when they concern sexual abuse. At the federal level, the Speak Out Act, signed December 7, 2022, makes pre-dispute nondisclosure and non-disparagement clauses unenforceable in disputes involving sexual assault or sexual harassment. Separately, a state law known as Trey's Law voids nondisclosure agreements in civil settlements involving child sexual abuse, sexual assault, and trafficking; as of mid-2026 a version had been enacted in seven states, some of them retroactively. Whether a specific agreement still binds a specific survivor depends on the state, the type of clause, and when it was signed, so the document should be reviewed by a lawyer rather than assumed to be either binding or void.

What is Trey's Law and which states have passed it?

Trey's Law is legislation that prohibits the use of nondisclosure agreements to silence survivors in civil settlements involving child sexual abuse, sexual assault, and trafficking, rendering those confidentiality provisions void and unenforceable. It is named for Trey Carlock, a survivor whose settlement contained such an agreement. As of mid-2026, versions had been enacted in seven states, including Texas (effective September 1, 2025) and Missouri (effective August 28, 2025), with additional states following in 2026. Retroactivity varies: some states free survivors who already signed, while others apply only to agreements made after the law's effective date. A bipartisan federal version, led by Senators Ted Cruz and Kirsten Gillibrand, advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2026.

I signed an NDA years ago as part of a settlement. Am I still bound by it?

Possibly not, but do not assume the answer either way, and do not simply breach it on your own. Whether an older nondisclosure agreement still binds a survivor depends on which state's law applies, whether that state has passed a law like Trey's Law, whether that law is retroactive, and exactly what the clause says. Some 2026 state laws free survivors who already signed; others do not. Because the consequences of guessing wrong can be serious, the safest step is to have the actual document reviewed confidentially by a lawyer who handles survivor cases before saying or doing anything based on it.

Coming Forward on Your Own Terms

None of this means a survivor must go public to hold anyone accountable. The point of these reforms is choice, not exposure. A survivor who wants to keep their name out of the record can still ask a court to proceed under a pseudonym, and a trauma-informed lawyer raises those protections at the very beginning rather than as an afterthought. You can read more in our guide to pseudonym filing for survivors. The reforms simply ensure that if a survivor chooses to speak — to warn others, to name a pattern, to reclaim their own history — a document signed under pressure cannot be used to punish them for it.

If You Are Considering a Case

If you were abused and later signed something you did not fully understand, or if you are weighing a case now and worry about being silenced later, you do not have to sort out the law on your own. A conversation with The Alvarez Law Firm costs nothing and is completely confidential. We listen first. We can review an existing agreement, explain how the current wave of laws applies to your specific situation, and help you understand what your rights actually are today — without pressure, and on your own timeline.

• How institutions bury what they know: What the records reveal.
• Holding the organization accountable: Institutional liability in sexual abuse cases.
• Filing without a criminal case: Why survivors can sue without a conviction.
• Filing privately: Pseudonym (“Jane Doe” / “John Doe”) filing.
• Deadlines and revival windows: Civil case deadlines — lookback windows by state.

Sources

• U.S. Congress — Speak Out Act, Pub. L. 117-224 (signed December 7, 2022); text and summary. congress.gov
• Trey's Law — Legislative Reform (organization founded by the Carlock family; state-by-state status). treyslaw.org
• The Texas Tribune — “Cruz leads bill that would block NDAs in child sex abuse cases” (federal TREY's Law; Trey Carlock and Kanakuk background). texastribune.org
• Enough Abuse — “Banning Non-Disclosure Agreements in CSA Settlements: Trey's Law Map” (state tracker). enoughabuse.org
• Stateline — “States move to ban NDAs that silence survivors of child sexual abuse” (February 2026). stateline.org
• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — free, confidential support (call or text 988). 988lifeline.org
• RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) — National Sexual Assault Hotline, 1-800-656-HOPE. rainn.org