A Harvey Weinstein whistleblower has said that nothing has changed in the years since she highlighted the issue of non-disclosure agreements being used to silence victims.
Zelda Perkins, a former assistant of Weinstein who was sexually harassed by the disgraced film producer, has campaigned in recent years since the scandal broke to stop lawyers coercing clients and victims into signing NDAs.
Speaking yesterday during a wide-ranging panel discussion on solicitor ethics, Perkins said little had changed despite the SRA’s attempts to take action in this area. ‘The reality is there has been no change,’ she told the Legal Services Board conference. ‘No regulatory change and no legislative change.
‘The SRA has tried to put out warning notices but as far as I am concerned a warning notice is a conversation, but in another few weeks, months or years that notice has been ignored. The guidance [to solicitors] when I signed the NDA in 1998 is the same as today.’
Perkins said the actions of those representing all parties were as big an issue as Weinstein’s behaviour, and the problem for her ‘started the moment I was in a room with a lawyer’.
‘I thought I was going to be somewhere to get help and I was disavowed of that almost immediately. The advice I was given was driven by the fact that regulation and legislation doesn’t support the legal profession to make ethically strong decisions.’
Perkins said the response of regulators to her complaints of wrongdoing also highlighted why many...
You are reading the second issue of the Disinformation Monitor. It is published on a monthly basis and provides an overview of developments on the disinformation scenes on NATO’s eastern frontier....