The Faith Pledge

Non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), also called “gag orders” or “confidentiality agreements,” were originally designed to protect trade secrets and proprietary information. Emerging during the tech boom of the 1990s, NDAs served a legitimate purpose in Silicon Valley: keeping sensitive business information out of competitors’ hands.

Over the past three decades, however, these agreements have spread far beyond the tech world. Today, NDAs are routinely used in workplaces, churches, schools and other institutions – not to protect innovation but to hide misconduct. In these settings, NDAs are often included in settlements related to sexual harassment, abuse, discrimination and other forms of wrongdoing. NDAs have become so commonplace that we see many churches using them in letters of severance where there has been no dispute, effectively forbidding any subsequent complaint. The result in settlements related to abuse? Silencing victims, concealing abuse and allowing harm to continue unchecked.

Studies in both Canada and the U.S. estimate that up to one-third of workers have signed an NDA at some point in their careers, yet only a small percentage of these agreements actually involve proprietary information. In Canada, hundreds of thousands of NDAs are signed every year, not for trade secrets or for genuinely confidential personal matters but to hide misconduct. Many of these agreements include clauses that prohibit survivors from speaking to friends, family, colleagues or even therapists about what happened.

This silence has devastating consequences. Research shows that 93 percent of people who sign NDAs experience long-term mental health impacts. The trauma of the original abuse is often compounded by the trauma of enforced silence. Survivors describe feeling isolated, anxious and powerless. Some are retraumatized each time they are forced to interact with their former abuser – who, in many cases, remains in a position of leadership or trust.

One survivor shared how signing an NDA after reporting misconduct in her church left her “more broken than the abuse itself.” She said, “I thought I was doing the right thing by protecting the church’s reputation. But I lost my community, my voice and years of my life.”

The Faith Pledge

Daughter Project Canada works to end the sexual exploitation of Canadian children and youth through awareness, advocacy and prevention. The organization has found that abuse and silence often go hand in hand, especially in institutions where power is imbalanced and victims fear not being believed. These environments are fertile ground for abusers to operate without accountability.

Daughter Project Canada has partnered with Can’t Buy My Silence, a global campaign co-founded by Dr. Julie Macfarlane, a Canadian law professor and survivor, and Zelda Perkins, a former assistant to Harvey Weinstein who broke her NDA to expose his abuse. Their work has led to legislative changes around NDA use and sparked conversations in workplaces, governments and institutions across the world.

Together, Daughter Project and Can’t Buy My Silence have launched The Faith Pledge to shine a light on the misuse of NDAs in faith-based spaces. They believe the church should be a place of transparency, not secrecy and that survivors should not be muzzled by legal documents.

By taking the Faith Pledge, churches commit to creating environments where people are safe to speak, where leaders are held accountable, and where justice is prioritized over reputation management.

By publicly committing to this pledge, churches send a powerful message: we value truth over image, healing over secrecy and people over power.

The misuse of NDAs in faith communities has been a systemic issue but it’s not irreversible. Culture shifts when individuals and institutions take bold, principled action. The Faith Pledge is one such step: a call to justice, compassion and transformation.