MONTGOMERY — The Alabama Senate passed legislation on Wednesday prohibiting non-disclosure agreements (NDA) in civil cases involving sexual abuse and trafficking.
Trey’s law sponsored by State Sen. Matt Woods (R-Jasper) is named after Trey Carlock, a member of the Dallas community with deep family roots in Alabama, who committed suicide in 2019, at the age of 28.
Carlock’s civil case against Kanakuk Ministries, where he and many others suffered abuse at the hands of director Pete Newman, ended with an NDA. Newman has been sentenced to three life sentences for his crimes.
Supporters of the bill say it ensures that survivors can share their stories without fear of legal repercussions.
“We need to allow victims of this terrible act to heal, and the only way they can heal is to be able to disclose what’s happened to them, talk about it, and move on with the healing process. Alabama needs to be a place that’s leading in this, and I believe today was a step in the right direction,” Woods told reporters on Wednesday.
State Sen. Greg Albritton (R-Atmore) said the bill was a procedural change that “could have effects that we don’t want to occur.”
“Boy Scouts of America was a nationwide organization that did many, many good things. Many people in this room were members of that…went from Tenderfoot to Eagle and those type things. That institution was caught in circumstances such as this and that institution has almost been completely destroyed,” Albritton said on the Senate floor. “That same thing is true with many institutions. I would suggest that had it not been for an NDA in this circumstance, the victim would have had to have gone to a second court to give testimony (and) gone through the trials and tribulations and such and things that were involved with that, and none of that would’ve helped the child. I don’t see how money can resolve the trauma that a child victim has experienced. I don’t think it can.
"I think they made the right decision in doing this from the outside in. They agreed to a settlement and did a non-disclosure statement, and that non-disclosure statement is a lifeline, very often for the institution to continue its efforts in trying to do good. It’ll have to clean up its act. It’ll have to institute procedures and things for protections which it needed to do before but somehow failed. But they paid the price, and they paid the money. The non-disclosure allowed them to continue in operation in some ways. If that is gone away, settlements will be reduced, by that I mean not in a money aspect, but in the ability to solve and resolve. If we pass this, we could be doing damage to institutions, including churches, including those not-for-profit organizations that are doing their best to do good in the communities. I would caution that eliminating that tool from civil procedure does more harm to our society than it does good.”
The bill now goes to the House for consideration.
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