'Why so secretive?' - women call for NDA law changes as agreements remain 'rife' in entertainment
'Why so secretive?' - women call for NDA law changes as agreements remain 'rife' in entertainment
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A former assistant to Harvey Weinstein has accused parliament of being too "slow to act" on the misuse of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) – saying there has been "a clear trail" of their use at the root of "every scandal of abuse". In 2017, Zelda Perkins was the first woman to break a Weinstein-related NDA signed decades earlier, an action which helped expose the Miramax movie producer's predatory behaviour to the world.
Since then, through her organisation Can't Buy My Silence, she's been a vocal campaigner to try to get changes to the law. Explaining her frustrations in an interview with Sky News, she said: "Since Weinstein's horrific behaviour was exposed nearly seven years ago we have seen other powerful abusers exposed on a monthly basis… there is a clear trail of the use of NDAs at the root of every scandal of abuse.
"International law is changing fast but the UK is being slow to act, which is especially frustrating to me as this is where the first exposure of the systemic use of NDAs to protect the powerful was highlighted.". An NDA is a legally binding contract that protects confidential information between parties. While they were conceived to protect Intellectual Property (IP) and can have a legitimate place in the world of business to protect client confidentiality, their misuse made headlines once again this year when hundreds of women came forward to make claims that NDAs had been used to silence victims of the late Harrods boss Mohamed al Fayed.
