Trey’s Law: Putting a Stop to Victim NDAs

Teresa Huizar: 

Hi, I’m Teresa Huizar, your host of One in Ten. In today’s episode, Trey’s Law: Putting a Stop to Victim NDAs, I speak with Elizabeth Phillips, Executive Director of the Phillips Foundation. Now, in our work every day, we see children who’ve been silenced by abuse, groomed to be silent, manipulated, coerced, or shamed into silence. But we also see those same children speak up and feel safe enough to do so to tell what happened to them.

Now, what you may not know is that without Trey’s law, some of them and many adult survivors could be silenced all over again, not by the person that groomed and abused them, but by insurance companies and institutions requiring nondisclosure agreements as a part of the settlement of civil claims. The institutions eager to manage their reputation, and insurance companies eager to settle claims. But what about the child victims?

What about the adult survivors? And how do we, as advocates for all who’ve been sexually abused, ensure that they can never be silenced again? To learn more about Trey’s Law and how to help, please take a listen.

Elizabeth, welcome to One in Ten.

Elizabeth Phillips: 

Teresa, thank you so much for having me on.

TH: 

I just really appreciate you joining us. We’re gonna talk about Trey’s Law, but it had its genesis in the Kanakuk camp scandal, which is a lot of C’s and K’s there, so I you know, apologize for kind of stumbling over that. And I don’t want to talk about that in any detail, but I’m wondering if you could just for folks who might not know anything about that institutional abuse case, can you just talk a little bit about what that was about?

EP: 

Yes, let’s jump right in. Thank you for setting that context. So Trey’s Law is named after my late brother who was groomed and abused at Kanakuk, a Christian sports camp based out of southwest Missouri for most of his adolescent years. So from age seven to seventeen, attended camp. There was a serial predator who was a director there, promoted up the ranks during that time as well, even after many red flags. So there’s been a lot of litigation, that perpetrator’s in prison for three life terms in Jefferson City, Missouri, and has countless victims. The number of John Doe’s just increases to my awareness by the week, really. There are also Jane Doe’s and multiple other perpetrators who have convictions and affiliations with Kanakuk Ministries, which is a global enterprise led by the White family. So it was really popular in the 2000s in evangelical circles especially, and I attended as well for seven years.

I had no idea this was happening to my brother really until we were both in adulthood and he was up against the clock with statute of limitations. Perpetrator was sent to prison, but he had to decide was he could pursue civil justice. So he did that. And unfortunately, as is typically the case in standard practice, the case was settled outside of a trial and he was put under an NDA or confidentiality clause as part of his settlement agreement to receive the financial resources he needed and was seeking for lifelong care. Needed a lifetime of therapy and recovery from what happened to him as a child. And the disclosure and the civil litigation process was forced very early on him by Texas Law, age of 23. so that was re-traumatizing. The NDA silenced him on top of his innocence already being stolen. And so that’s why he sought justice against Kanakuk and all the parties involved in the abuse and not just the direct perpetrator. So that’s a little bit of the story and what brought me here in a nutshell. Trey died by suicide. He was silenced to his grave at the age of 28. And for the last seven years, I’ve been working on passing Trey’s law with an army of survivors and advocates across the country so that no other child is silenced, no other sexual assault survivor can be put under NDA.

Because that is a violation of our freedom of speech, first of all. And as you know better than most, Teresa, the shame of child sexual abuse is already strong enough. There doesn’t need to be lawful hush money. It doesn’t need to be sign on the dotted line to secure that silence oftentimes. We know about delayed disclosure. We know about the psychology of that trauma. And if we can remove NDAs from the equation in our civil courts in the US, then we are giving victims their voices back and hopefully they are survivors and I used to refer to my brother as a survivor, but he didn’t survive. So I refer to him as a victim and hope that others don’t have his outcome through this work.

TH: 

Well, I think you’ve taken on a very important lever in the system in his memory. And I’m so sorry for your loss, but also I think that what you are doing is incredible work really for other survivors so that they won’t have these tragic outcomes. But let’s talk about non-disclosure agreements for just a minute, because often our listeners are very familiar with the criminal side of cases, but they may be less familiar with the civil side, which as you say is really about making sure that survivors have the kind of resources they need to go on with their lives, including counseling foremost, and that’s expensive and it costs money. And so these are monetary settlements. How common is it for there to be nondisclosure clauses in these settlement agreements?

EP: 

So the best way to describe it and how I’ve come to understand it as a non-lawyer, you know, I came into this work with no JD, no experience in politics and advocacy, just as a grieving sister, connecting with survivors who either knew something about Trey’s Story or read his obituary came forward themselves. So as we’ve navigated these issues with the system, what I’ve learned also along the way, becoming a certified crime victim advocate is the difference between criminal and civil and with criminal cases, you’re really a witness for the state to put a bad guy behind bars. With civil justice, you are pursuing that financial remedy. So with NDAs, what’s become standard practice is that this falls under personal injury law. So typically the attorneys that are representing survivors of child sexual abuse and trafficking, they’re used to templates that would pertain to perhaps a slip and fall or a construction accident, a car accident. These are the types of attorneys you see on billboards along the highway, call 1-800 car wreck. So they may not be specialized in sexual abuse. So it somehow this NDA issue infiltrated this area of legal practice that is not super specialized in this type of trauma. So lawyers oftentimes through no fault of their own, just out of this being what they do in other cases, they will have survivors sign away their voice and a survivor may or may not realize what they’re even signing. Oftentimes it’s the guardian or the parent of the victim who or the plaintiff who is signing this on behalf of their child. Children can’t consent to contracts. And so it’s bizarre that this loophole ever existed and we’re trying to close that loophole so that the bad actors cannot silence their victims after they’ve already abused them and put them through this trauma that often takes a lifetime to heal.

TH: 

You raise some very interesting points about where this resides in the law and what people’s familiarity is with child sexual abuse, if they’re the type of lawyer who winds up representing a client who is pursuing a civil settlement. But then there’s the other side of that, which is the insurance company or the institution itself, which has, in the case of the institution, perpetuated the abuse. And they have reasons that are not just templates for why they might want that non-disclosure or that confidentiality agreement to be a part of it in order to continue to silence victims and survivors and for PR purposes so that they can tell their own story and no one can contradict it, those kinds of things. So I think that, you know, it’s an interesting mix of motives around this, it seems to me. I wonder what you think about the complexity of some of these things too. We have been on a completely different subject just to, I’ve been involved in a lot of contractual work this year. So I’ve had to read far more contracts than I would have liked to. And I’m not a lawyer either. And I have to say that even for someone who’s read a lot of contracts over the years, these are really complex. And so going to your average parent of a survivor or the survivor themselves, who may have no background in this and they’ve got a lawyer telling them it’s a good idea to sign it. I mean, it feels like people really could sign something without knowing the implications of what they’re signing.

EP: 

Yes, and NDAs go by many names. They can be called non-disparagement clauses, confidentiality agreements. They can be entirely separate documents. Some of the Kanakuk NDAs I’ve seen are five pages long. Some of them are designed to be very intimidating even though they wouldn’t hold up in court. But an institution like Kanakuk is so bent on protecting their brand and their narrative that they write these very specifically to silence and intimidate survivors, so they never speak out about the institution’s role in the abuse, whether that is Pete Newman, the super predator I mentioned earlier, who’s in prison, although we just had to protest his parole 15 years into a three life term sentence, another issue we are identifying. But there are other perpetrators associated with Kanakuk as well, same thing. Put under NDAs and then it gets swept under the rug, but the victim, the plaintiff, their parents might not even realize what they have signed. It was presented to them by their council as this is how we put this behind you, get you the funds you need for therapy. What we’ve learned on this journey, and there are versions of Trey’s Law now passed in seven states. So things have popped up across the country that this movement has taken off is that insurance companies care more about protecting the settlement amount than they do the institution’s PR strategy, crisis PR cover up plan. And then institutions care about their brand image and reputation or a bad actor, a perpetrator cares about their image reputation and not ending up in prison for the rest of their life or getting caught and sued over and over again. So that you’re right. The incentives are often layered, nuanced, depending on the codefendant who’s named as a codefendant. Is there insurance coverage involved? To what degree? Because sometimes an attorney won’t even take a case if there’s not an insurance policy where they can collect on whatever is agreed upon as the settlement value. So this is a whole new world that I’ve been thrown into and had to learn what my brother endured, not only at the hands of this institution and this perpetrator, but also his own attorney guiding him into agreeing to an additional settlement value if he were to sign the NDA to settle his case. So Kanakuk specifically requested not Pete Newman, not the insurance company, the institution, Kanakuk Camp, specifically added settlement value if he would sign the NDA as part of his agreement. And I just don’t think it gets more evil than that.

TH: 

Now that is just it’s malicious, really. And I think that one of the interesting factors as well, and this isn’t to disparage attorneys, but I do think there you can’t you can’t set aside the fact that the attorney who’s representing someone also wants to be paid, right? And they’re getting paid as a part of that agreement, the settlement agreement.

And so there’s some strange financial incentives to settling early. If there’s additional monies that are available for signing a non-disparagement or confidentiality agreement as a part of that, it’s not to say that they’re going to recommend something that they think is against their client’s interest, but if they don’t have a specialization in child sexual abuse, then their ability to actually know what’s in their client’s interest is not really there either. You know, they may think this is a good thing for their client and advise them to do it when in fact it’s counterproductive long term.

EP: 

Totally. And let me speak to what I have I’ve learned more about what happened in my brother and his death than I knew in his life because of this NDA and what I observed as a big sister when he was going through this, it led to his first psychotic break because the attorney was not protecting him in depositions and he was being gaslighted by opposing counsel. And they were asking him questions that were re-traumatizing. He was reliving the abuse. So he didn’t have a trauma-informed attorney and those are hard to come by. One of the things that I also have incorporated into this mission and work is getting in front of whether it’s trial attorney associations or speaking at the National Crime Victims Conference coming up soon, just making sure lawyers and especially trial attorneys who take these cases on understand what delayed disclosure is, understand how to approach it in a trauma informed way. I mean, that’s what you’ve been working on at NCA for decades is ensuring that the first line of the first line that receives a victim of this horrible, heinous crime, that they are trauma informed, that they’re not reliving their story over and over, being retraumatized. That’s the point of these multidisciplinary teams. And that just doesn’t exist in the legal system on the civil side from what I’ve seen.

TH: 

Yes, sadly, tragically, I think that is very much the case. And I was looking at your website in preparation for a conversation today, along with other things. And you know, I will say 2025 was an incredible year in terms of state legislation around Trey’s law. It just really expanded the coverage of this to California, Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Alabama, Georgia.

I’m curious about the states. Just many of your listeners do this work too and have a public policy component of what they do. How were the states selected for that that you decided to focus on these particular states? Because it’s really amazing the level of success that you had in 2025.

EP: 

Well, I credit the ninety plus advocates and survivor voices who showed up at state houses across the country for this movement. It really did become a movement and it makes me teary thinking back on some of the very powerful moments in committee hearings or from House floors and Senate floors across the US. But we started with Texas and Missouri, Texas because that’s where my family where we were raised, and then Missouri because that’s where Kanakuk is.

And this journey honestly began around statute of limitations reform because of what I was describing earlier. But Trey could have pursued civil justice in a variety of jurisdictions, including overseas where he was abused as far away as China on mission trips. And so he chose the venue that where his case landed is Texas. And I see under Texas law right now, today.

If you were sexually abused as a child between 1995 and 2015, you only have until the age of 23 as a victim to sue in civil court. So these are arbitrary deadlines. In Missouri, it’s age of 26. And along the way, there have been extensions to these SOL, statutes of limitations. But Texas has a very short statute of limitations. And so I started meeting with legislators and getting put in touch with lobbyists who cared about similar issues or advocacy organizations such as yours who understand the psychology of trauma and why we have to change statute of limitations. And so when I was doing this work and listening to survivors and working walking the halls with survivors and in my capacity as a crime victim advocate, working on some of these cases as well, I realized, well, this NDA issue is low hanging fruit. I mean, with statute limitations reform, we have a ton of opposition from entire religious denominations, Boy Scouts, the insurance industry, hundreds of millions of dollars pouring into that opposition on something that would be a game changer for survivors injustice and uncovering hidden predators, but very, very hard and sometimes with a constitutional conflict in certain states. So we’ll continue doing that work. Our campaign around statute limitations reform is called against the clock, because we want survivors to know that they are up against the clock to pursue justice if that’s something that’s part of their healing journey. It’s not right. But your access to America’s civil courts depends on the zip code or the jurisdiction in which you are abused. And that has to change. But we have to go state by state on that. With NDAs and what ultimately was named Trey’s Law by our Texas state sponsor, this is something everyone agreed on. I mean, we had actual lobbyists who were opposing us on statute limitations reform come testify in favor of Trey’s Law.

TH: 

So interesting.

EP: 

It was so interesting. And so this was really a no-brainer for any state we entered, and it was through those familial connections or where the most survivors reached out to us from saying, I want to bring this to my state. Also, the awareness created from passing this law in Texas and Missouri last session 2025, it had a ripple effect into this year 2026. Certain states meet annually as a legislature, right as every other year. So we’re learning that, we’re mapping it out, and we’re deciding what our priority states are going forward. But the big hope is that we can pass trades law federally. And as drafted, this was introduced back in March of this year to US Congress by Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and a bipartisan slate of senators. And this was ten Democrats, eleven Republicans, very bipartisan. How often do we see that? And when it comes to kids, this is something we should easily all agree on that they should not be contractually silenced when they seek justice and civil remedies. So this is something that passed the Senate unanimously in May. So we got out of committee, a bunch of co-sponsors added on, and we built a broad coalition, including NCA, thank you. And now we await house action. So if there’s anything that’s a call to action today to your listeners on Trey’s Law, it’s urging your house representative, you’re reaching out to House Leadership, you know, Speaker Johnson, to just say we need to get House action on SB3966 because it passed the Senate through a unanimous consent vote. We’re hoping for a vote on the House floor under suspension of the rule, similarly, to get that unanimous consent vote and get this on the president’s desk. Because every day of delay, every day of delay is another day that a victim’s voice could be taken from them.

It’s unconstitutional, it’s un American, and it’s not prioritizing the safety of children. It’s an urgent matter of public safety.

TH: 

Let me ask you something because I’m just curious. When you pivoted, which is not to say you stopped at all your state work, because there was there’s been all kinds of state work going on in 2026, but it was it really this issue? I because you and I think it’s completely right to have this sense of urgency that, you know, no one should have their voice silenced in this way. That you just saw that if this could be done federally, it could just speed that process up so much. Whereas this fifty state solution, you can get there, but it’s just a longer trajectory. Or was there something else?

EP: 

I realized that going state by state was going to be very expensive. I mean, we do have an army of advocates who are dedicated and tireless and showing up and reliving their worst trauma in a public format in order to change the law wherever they live. But do we really want to have to put survivors through all of this in all these states? And if we can pass the law federally and it has preeminence over all fifty states, we don’t have to go through the cost of hiring even low bono and we have some wonderful pro bono lobbyists, but lobbying firms are not cheap. And that’s right. And so going state by state, when you start doing the calculation on what that costs, you understand really what you’re up against. And so I’m very grateful to our champions in US Congress, of course, the state legislators who created the foundation for us to take this federal and say, look, seven states already have a version of this in place. Do we want a child’s right to their voice if they’ve been abused and trafficked to depend on the jurisdiction of where their case is? So we have to take this federally and we need to do it quickly. And the way it’s drafted, it has retroactivity. So it makes all NDAs related to child sexual abuse and trafficking void and unenforceable as an as a matter of public policy, federally across all fifty states. That’s how this bill is written. And Senator Cruz and Senator Gillibrand and our original co-sponsors in the House are Congressman Gill and Congresswoman Johnson. And they were very intentional in how the language was written and how this bill was constructed so that it would achieve the goal we’re seeking across America.

TH: 

I think it was so smart to think about the need for retroactivity, right? That there are people who have NDAs right now and are currently silenced. And if this passes the House, it gets signed into law, then it frees them. And you can just imagine the relief that so many people would feel in that situation. I think that it was also really smart to get a year of just wild success at the state level under your belt before taking it federal, because it gave you a way to say, see, there’s bipartisan support in seven states, all of those things. So I just think it was such smart strategy and all of this. I wonder, is it a timing issue that you think the House hasn’t taken it up yet? Or are you hearing any sort of actual opposition?

EP: 

So the house is in recess right now. They’re back in September. So that’s our big push. Of course, we’re up against the midterms. And so people’s focus is fragmented. And I’ll be in DC in a couple of weeks pushing for more House representatives to understand the urgency of this. We really want to get it done in September. And we would love your audience and all advocates and survivors to rally around this push coming up because if we don’t get it done in September, then midterms happen and then it’s what’s called lame duck season. And that’s a term I’ve learned recently too. Learning as we go. So thank you for calling things smart, really. We’re just figuring it out as we go along. But you brought up a few things that I just want to elaborate on. Some of the powerful moments of seeing victims go from that that mindset of victim to survivor that we witnessed this session is they got their voices back because the law we passed in Texas was retroactive. So there’s one very brave man around my brother’s age who showed up in Missouri because of Trey’s Law Passing in Texas. He was freed from his NDA. Our hashtag — a Kanakuk victim — hashtag is truth set free. His truth was set free. So he could then come testify at a Senate committee hearing in Missouri on our statute of limitations reform bill.

And so that was, it still gives me goosebumps remembering that moment. And then in Georgia, actually Governor Kemp, he made this a priority bill. And he announced that in the state of the state address, I got a call. We weren’t even working in Georgia. I get a call from his team that First Lady Kemp and Governor Kemp would like to name Trey’s Law as one of eleven priority anti trafficking bills. And they followed through. I mean, I don’t know why we’re so surprised when politicians follow through but it followed through and we passed trade ball with retroactivity in Georgia. I love that. And there’s a survivor in Georgia who came forward for the first time in his testimony in that judiciary committee hearing. And so it’s moments like that where I’ll never forget where I see these survivors come into their voice and it becomes holy ground. I consider it a sacred honor to be witness to that.

TH: 

I think one thing that you mentioned, and I can’t remember if it was earlier in this interview or the one that you did with Senator Cruz, had to do with the fact that survivors and if they’re hampered by a confidentiality agreement, they may not feel like they can even talk about their experiences with their family, with friends. And to think about how horrible that is to be completely stifled from the very things that might be helpful to their healing. And so I think it’s not just that it’s really un-American to decide that you’re going to silence someone in this way. It’s also that you’re impeding their healing process and their family’s healing, right?

EP: 

Absolutely. And that’s when I talked to some of the therapists that treated my brother, they mentioned that he was scared to even talk about this in therapeutic settings. There are survivors who are scared to talk about it in the context of AA.  Trying to get sober. And like they can’t even talk about their worst trauma. How do you heal? We all know that talking about what happened to you is how you heal that? And there’s a quote I love sharing, and I’ve said it in several hearings that shame dies when stories are told in safe places. And I got to say that in front of, I believe as the Texas House Judiciary Committee, they held an interim briefing for us so we could educate their committee on this issue of NDAs as we were drafting the bill and getting ready for the last session. And I used that quote and I said, Texas can make itself a safe space for shame to die. And it passed unanimously with 100% bipartisan support with retroactivity in Texas, a state that told me retroactivity would never happen. It hasn’t been challenged. All we’ve seen is good come from it, all we’ve seen is healing, all we’ve seen is truth set free, and we want to take that nationwide.

TH: 

I think that one of the things that makes this bill so powerful is that it’s a simple and clear solution to a problem. And I think policymakers rarely are presented with an opportunity to take an action that’s so clear and that can have such a clear result, right? A clear positive impact. And so I think that that is what makes me hopeful that in the time that we have in September to work on this, that we can get it over the finish line, that it can pass the house.

And I think honestly, surely, folks are looking for a bipartisan win. But these are tough times in the halls of Congress. So I think people are looking for opportunity. I think if you look at what you did on the Senate side, you know, there are probably not tons of things that Senators Cruz and Gillibrand agree on. And yet they came together and really agreed on this and pulled in other individuals to also agree that this is a wonderful solution to a very real problem. And so I’m just hopeful that all of our listeners, all of the child abuse professionals who hear this can also put in a word to their house members and just say, This is something important to us. It’s something that it’s not difficult for you to do. We can get this over the finish line in time.

EP: 

Absolutely. And asking your house rep to be a co-sponsor of the House version in case for some reason we can’t get the Senate bill over through the House, we’ll try it the other way around. And that’s helpful too, because when this does come to a house floor vote, the more co-sponsors the better. So thank you for reiterating that call to action. We really want to get this done in September. but there’s plan B, C, D, E on mission until victims have their voices back.

Because it’s just like you said, who can disagree with this? This is something that even the worst of enemies should be able to shake hands around. And I also credit people that I’ve met like Gretchen Carlson, who led the Speak Out Act with Julie Roganski, both Roger Ailes victims. And they founded Lift Our Voices as survivors of that mess and eradicated NDAs in the workplace when you’re sexually harassed at work. And so the Me Too movement had done this for adults, and so I’m calling this Kids Too. When I’m meeting with legislators and when I’m meeting with congressmen and women, when I’m meeting with senators, I talk about if we’ve done this for adults, why are we leaving kids behind? This is a matter of political will and priorities. And if the house members get outreach from their constituents to push house leadership, this will come to a vote. And we need SB3966 to come to a House floor vote under suspension of the rules. We can do this. That is the hope I share with you, Teresa.

TH: 

So for folks who want more information about this, you know, we’re going to link to the Trey’s Law website in our show notes. But is there anything else, any other place you’d point them to, or is the website the best place to get that information?

EP: 

So treyslaw.org for the FAQ section, because you know, in these meetings we do start getting frequently asked questions, like can this settlement agreement still protect a victim’s confidentiality? Of course. We just want the ball to be in their court. And so the FAQ section is really helpful at treyslaw.org. Treyslaw.org/federal is the information I just shared verbally, bill numbers, and how to contact your house member your US senator and then we are also on social media so Instagram find us Trey’s law on Instagram on X. I am still having a hard time not saying Twitter. Find us on X. Instagram, Facebook, and the website will continue to evolve as we have more information to put there and more calls to action to come. Signing up for the newsletter is how you get this straight to your inbox, these calls to action about when to contact your house member or please send a note to X, Y, and Z organizations that may be helpful. So we always are in touch with our advocate army and the survivor voices that have gotten us this far, but it helped if you sign up for our newsletter.

TH: 

Well Elizabeth, is there anything else I should have asked you today and didn’t, or anything else about Trey’s Law that you wanted to make sure that our audience knew?

EP: 

If I may. You know, since I’m so new to this world and I’ve been doing this about five years, six years, in the CAC world, I’m curious on the criminal side, what the ramifications of NDAs and civil court are on these criminal investigations where you’re the front line because I’ve heard from law enforcement in this journey as well that NDAs inhibit not just healing but also justice.

TH: 

I think it’s true. I think it’s possible that they can have a negative impact on a criminal case. I will say that I think that in most criminal cases, kids are, because the forensic interview comes so early in the process, you know, as soon as there’s a disclosure, kiddos coming into a CAC, they’re having that recorded interview. And that precedes any of this sort of settlement talk. I think in those scenarios, it probably doesn’t have as much impact.

Until you get to the point in which you need the child to testify, in addition to if you happen to be in a state where that has to happen, in addition to the play of the recording. But there are all of these cases in which you have delayed disclosure, right? Maybe at the time the child comes to the CAC initially, they’re not ready to disclose and they don’t initially. And then maybe something starts proceeding on the civil side and the criminal case is kind of lagging.

Then I think you really can see some impact there. So I think for us, even though we’re not as involved on the civil side, we still deeply care that victims have the right to talk about what happened to them to anyone they need to at any time, to their faith community, to their friends, to their family, to their victim advocate, to their counselor, to anyone else. So I think this is very much a case where, you know, we feel like even though we’re dealing with child victims, and many of these cases may involve even adult survivors, although some won’t. We feel very close, I would say, allyship with anyone who’s facing that issue.

EP: 

Yeah, that makes sense. And it’s a situation you don’t have to know till you have to know it and you find yourself in these situations or you lose a loved one or someone you know is harmed or you’re harmed and I just hate how hard earned these lessons are. So getting the word out is super important. And one thing we’re doing that I do want to add before we close is that the states where we’ve passed this, we’re doing a know your rights campaign. But with that the versions of Trey’s Law that have passed in these seven states to date are all specific to that state. And so we encourage survivors who are unsure if Trey’s Law applies to them that they do talk with legal counsel to understand the application of Trey’s Law in their specific case. But in Texas, this doesn’t just apply to kids. We centered it on children, but the committees where they heard survivors who were abused maybe from the age of 14 to 23, they’re coming out of the abuse as adults. They’re not defined as minors in the context of court. So what Texas did was really huge because it wasn’t just retroactive, but it applied to witnesses of this misconduct, employment contracts, adult sexual assault survivors as well. And same in Alabama, they extended it to adult sexual assault survivors. But in Alabama, it didn’t have that retroactivity. So every state’s a little different as far as how they drafted Trey’s Law and what exactly we passed. But our non-negotiable when it comes to a version of Trey’s Law being called Trey’s Law is that minors cannot be silenced with NDAs in the civil settlement process. And those effective dates are different in different states as well, too. So just wanted to mention that because it while it is a cut and dry black and white, this makes sense law, it has different variations across the country, which is another reason we need the federal bill to pass so there’s consistency.

TH: 

Sounds like this education campaign in the states, because they differ, is going to be very important. But also that I want to think when Trey’s Law passes federally, that there’s also going to be the need to really educate survivors and their family members, because you have children that, as you say, can’t consent anyway. And so there’s going to be a need for a real education campaign there. And I think this is also a role that the victim advocates within children’s advocacy centers can potentially help with in terms of spreading whatever materials you all develop, getting those into the hands of family so that they’re aware.

EP: 

Thank you. Yes. Love that. I mean, I just so appreciate the National Children’s Alliance, the work you do for our kids nationwide through CACs. Again, it’s a place you don’t want to have to know about, but when you need it, you’re so glad it’s there. So thank you, Teresa. Thank you, NCA. And I look forward to continuing these partnerships, whether it’s know your rights, pushing these this legislation, statute of limitations reform. We have a lot of work to do.

TH: 

We do. We have a lot of work in common and a lot of work to do. Well, Elizabeth, I think that you have taken a very, very difficult situation for your family and tried to turn it into something good for many, many others. And I just appreciate your work in that way and we’ll do what we can to get the word further spread about Trey’s Law federally and in hopes that it saves suffering for so many.

EP: 

Thank you for the encouragement. Thank you so much.

TH: 

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