North Texas Bill Aims to Help Victims of Sex Abuse to Speak Out

A Texas House committee voted unanimously Wednesday to advance a bill that would outlaw the use of non-disclosure agreements in civil settlements for sexual abuse cases. Trey's Law would also render existing confidentiality agreements in these cases “void and unenforceable.”

House Bill 748, filed by Representative Jeff Leach of Plano, is named in honor of Trey Carlock of Highland Park. Carlock died by suicide in 2019 after suffering years of grooming and child sex abuse at the hands of his camp counselor, Pete Newman, who is now serving two life sentences in a Missouri prison for the abuse of at least 50 known minor victims.

Newman was employed by the evangelical Camp Kanakuk in Branson, Missouri, which is hugely popular with many of Dallas’ most well-to-do families. The camp has been criticized for using non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of child sex abuse; Carlock’s sister, Elizabeth Carlock Phillips, told the state committee Wednesday that her brother was pressured into signing an NDA after disclosing his abuse.

Before his death, he referred to the settlement as “blood money,” she said.

“When you take someone's voice away, especially a child's, you take away their most linear path to healing,” Phillips said. “NDAs are for trade secrets, not trauma secrets. I get asked a lot since becoming more public about this issue on a national level, ‘Why would your brother sign an NDA?’ … The opposing counsel offers you seven figures if you sign on the dotted line. You need to be able to pay for treatment and a lifetime of care, you want to move on and hopefully heal. So you accept the payout, but it feels like a bribe.”

Carlock lives in North Dallas and has also lobbied to pass a similar bill in the Missouri legislature.

While the first draft of H.B. 748 was specific to child sex abuse cases, the Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence amended the law to apply to all cases of sex abuse and sex trafficking. Leach said he feels the use of NDAs in abuse cases is a “major problem” that current state law fails to address.

“By allowing these types of agreements, often horrific and systemic abuse is hidden from the public eye, resulting in few consequences for the perpetrators and often allowing for more people to be harmed by unknowingly interacting with a bad actor who's hidden behind a nondisclosure agreement,” Leach told the committee. “We have a duty to protect victims.”

Cindy Clemshire, the woman who accused former Gateway Pastor Robert Morris of sexually abusing her as a girl, also testified before the committee. Clemshire said she was offered a non-disclosure agreement by Morris’ attorneys in 2007 totaling $25,000, which she refused to sign.

Morris turned himself in to Oklahoma authorities earlier this week after being indicted on five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child. Clemshire told legislators that if she’d accepted the NDA offered nearly two decades ago, no one would have ever known what she’d gone through starting at the age of 12.

“The first time he made the premeditated decision to violate and defile my purity, he told me, and I quote, ‘You can never tell anyone because it will ruin everything,’” Clemshire said. “Because I refused to sign an NDA, my abuser is finally being held accountable for the horrific crimes he committed against me as a child. Because I refused to sign the NDA at the age of 37, I am able to sit here at the age of 55 and share my story and be the voice for so many people who don't have the courage to come forward.”

After being unanimously passed through the committee Wednesday, Trey’s Law will now be up for a vote on the House floor. If approved, it will be voted on by the state Senate before reaching the Governor’s desk, where it can be signed into law.