Cutting Out Her Tongue: The Impact of Silencing Trauma through a Nondisclosure Agreement

Abstract

Using a clinical example of my work with a patient who signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) following a sexual assault, I examine the impact of legal silencing in the aftermath of trauma. I describe how NDAs function as coercive instruments of powerful institutions and patriarchy. By closing off access to social and political space, the victim’s responses are compressed into the intrapsychic domain where they are experienced as shame, self-doubt, and worthlessness. Outrage is turned inward and shame is transferred to the victim. Silencing and isolation collapse mental space for thinking and prevent the relational processes necessary for recovery. I argue that NDAs are an ethical betrayal of victims by the institutions that use them, and by society in allowing them. The therapist’s role as witness and ethical ally is discussed. I reflect on motives for, and dilemmas inherent in, writing about a treatment in which the patient is legally silenced.

Keywords:

• nondisclosure agreement
• silencing
• sexual assault
• institutional betrayal
• ethics
• witnessing

Notes

1 A note on language: I have chosen to identify perpetrators as male and victims as female throughout. This reflects the situation in the case I present, as well as in the vast majority of sexual assault cases. Yes, men can also be victims and women perpetrators. However, I am also writing about systems of social control in which men hold the power to create ways to silence women, as well as to maintain and abuse this power. I also choose to use “victim” rather than “survivor” of sexual assault. Although using “survivor” aims not to disempower, it implies agency and resilience. It places an emphasis on how the assault was navigated rather than the helplessness of being overpowered, better expressed in the word “victim.”

2 Identifying information has been disguised to protect the patient’s confidentiality.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leah Lipton

Leah Lipton, LCSW, is a supervisor and faculty member at The Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy and a faculty member at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center. She is the author of the article “Long Distance Psychoanalysis” (2001, Clinical Social Work Journal, 29(1), pp. 35–52). She has a private practice in New York.