But all three women struckconfidential agreements resolving their cases against the men, who denied the claims against them. Mr. Affleck went on to win an Oscar, and Mr. Boreanaz is a star of the new CBS drama "SEAL Team".
I reached out to Ms. Allred on Friday to discuss what many people were coming to view as the systemic silencing of women — a stratagem that, yes, compensates the accusers, but also enriches the lawyers who arrange the deals and, arguably, leaves other women vulnerable. Wasn’t that system, I asked, stifling a broader discussion?
“My duty as an attorney is to my client and to assist her and protect her and support her in what she thinks is best for her life,” Ms. Allred told me. “I don’t think any woman should be sacrificed for the ‘cause.’”
For a number of women, she said, a confidential settlement is the right outcome. “Some clients want to protect their privacy — they don’t want anybody to know,” she said.
In most cases, Ms. Allred said, if there is no confidentiality agreement, there is no shot at a settlement. And she disputed the notion that out-of-court settlements somehow let the alleged harassers off scot-free.
”If the accused sexual harasser is paying my client $500,000, or $1 million or $2 million, that’s not nuisance value,” she said. “That’s an admission that the accused feels that he has risk and that he has done something that he should not have done.”
Still, Mr. O’Reilly has lately asserted that he struck the deals only to “protect my family.” Over the weekend, he used his website to call the latest Times report a "smear piece".
In return for the $32 million he was said to have paid Ms. Wiehl, Mr. O’Reilly bought more than her silence. As part of the deal, the Times reported, all text messages and other communications between them were destroyed, and he got an affidavit, signed by Ms. Wiehl, in which she attested that she had “no claims” regarding the allegations in her initial complaint.
Because of such agreements, it required months and months of reporting on the part of those who nailed down the stories on Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Weinstein — just as they stymied so many earlier efforts by others. Jessica E. Lessin, the editor in chief of the tech news website The Information, said that the use of nondisclosure agreements slowed its investigation into sexual harassment allegations in Silicon Valley — specifically, against Justin Caldbeck of Binary Capital. (He resigned) from Binary and apologized, saying it was wrong to “leverage a position of power in exchange for sexual gain.”)
“The freedom to tell your story shouldn’t be easily signed away,” Ms. Lessin told me. “It doesn’t mean there aren’t cases where it’s reasonable to use them, but they appear so frequently that it is a sign that women are being forced to sign away their rights to free speech.”
Binary, by the way, was protected by another form of legal silencing — nondisparagement clauses attached to employment contracts, which, as The Times reported in July, the company sought to use to keep complaints from going public. The Weinstein Company had a similar provision, The New Yorker reported.
The New York State Legislature is considering legislation that would void contract provisions that keep employees from bringing harassment and discrimination claims.
That’s a start.
