FKA Twigs won't be silenced, but NDA laws ensure that other victims will be
By Regina Featherstone
A quick note to say hello and welcome to Cheek’s brand spankin’ new culture section, Culture Bite, which will be dropping a new article into your inbox every Sunday from here on in. We’re kicking off with a brilliant piece from lawyer Regina Featherstone, who writes about a chilling celebrity legal dispute that shows how abusers can weaponise the law to silence their victims - reminding us of the few legal protections offered to women fighting similar cases in Australia.
Content advice: This article contains details of domestic and sexual violence
FKA Twigs is a genre-bending Grammy award-winning artist, record producer and actress. On top of this, she is a fierce gender advocate. Twigs is an ambassador for Sistah Space, a UK community-led charity assisting African & Caribbean heritage women affected by domestic and sexual abuse. She has created an educational grant to get more women into music tech roles.
Twigs is also a victim-survivor of abuse. Long after their relationship ended, her alleged abuser used the law to continue to harm her, attempting to sue her for a breach of a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). But she can’t be silenced.
Twigs, real name Tahliah Debrett Barnett, has a settlement agreement with her former partner, actor Shia Labeouf for what she alleges was “relentless abuse” during their relationship in 2018-2019. She alleges he choked her, isolated her and gave her a sexually transmitted disease. She sued him, but they settled out-of-court with the terms of their settlement being confidential.
Note: From this point, only Twigs will be named. Labeouf will be referenced as ‘alleged perpetrator’ or ‘he’. Twigs’ voice will be amplified not as the receiver of harm but as its challenger.
In December 2025, The Hollywood Reporter asked Twigs if she “felt a sense of safety”, to which she replied she “did not feel safe”. That’s all she said…and he filed an action for breach of the NDA and sought damages.
NDAs are terms in out-of-court settlements which can prevent a person speaking about certain things. They are often referred to as ‘gag clauses’. In Australia, they are made up of confidentiality and non-disparagement terms, meaning you must keep certain information confidential and cannot speak negatively about the other party.
In California, a law was introduced in 2018 in the wake of the #MeToo movement to stop NDAs or ‘secret settlements’ which hide abuse. The Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act (STAND) prevents NDAs being used in sexual harassment, discrimination and sexual assault settlements.
Pieces like this one are free to read. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber so Cheek can continue paying writers for their insight and expertise.
How could Twigs be sued?
Because Twigs originally sued her alleged abuser for ‘sexual battery’, not ‘sexual assault’, his legal team argued STAND didn’t apply and the NDA is still valid. Ultimately, his NDA breach case was dismissed, but it goes to show that even with such a strong law with a clear intention to stop the silencing of women, abusers will still try to perpetrate harm via any loopholes available.
What happens when there are no protections like the STAND Act?
In Australia NDAs remain the standard resolution tactic, with limited regulation. But change is slowly coming. On 1 July 2026, thanks to staunch unions and victim-survivor advocates, a law banning NDAs in workplace sexual harassment settlements (unless requested by the complainant) comes into effect in Victoria. The Working Women’s Centre SA has secured a commitment from the South Australian Malinauskas Government to follow suit.
At the national level, the Working Women’s Centre Australia, a peak body for working women’s justice, have a campaign to ban the misuse of NDAs nationwide - it’s called ‘Our Silence is Not For Sale’. Lived experience advocates Julia Delaforce, Anna Hough, and Kirsty Prince have also created the BantheNDA campaign.
In the meantime, there are few shields in Australia. If a successful recording artist like Twigs in a jurisdiction with strong legal protections can still be pursued because of a technicality, what will happen to migrant women at work, First Nations women, LGBTIQ+ women, and women with disability who report abuse? These women face disproportionately high levels of sexual misconduct in Australia, but will likely be silenced if they report.
NDAs are not the only legal silencing tactic. Research I conducted with Sharmilla Bargon, Legal Director at Women’s Legal Service NSW, showed that defamation threats are routinely used to silence low-income-earning women who report workplace sexual harassment. Defamation’s purpose is to protect a person’s reputation from false and damaging information, but just like NDAs, it can be misused to silence.
Take Biplavi Magar, for example. A woman on a student visa working at a Mad Mex franchise who reported horrific sexual harassment and received a defamation threat. Redfern Legal Centre helped her win her sexual harassment case, with the Court finding the defamation threat was made to stop her complaint. A great win, but it shouldn’t take a legal trial to show defamation in this context is unlawful.
The law continues to allow those who report harm to be silenced. Until we make it safe to speak up with needed law reform, we can’t know the extent of abuse in order to create solutions.
Twigs is known for her voice in more ways than one. She’s now seeking a court order that prevents her alleged abuser from ever enforcing the NDA. Her lawyer says this isn’t about money but enforcing a law “designed to protect survivors by nullifying illegal NDAs”.
About the author
Regina Featherstone
Regina is a Senior Lawyer and Researcher. She jointly conducted Australia’s first empirical research on NDA practices in 2024 at The University of Sydney. She is a 2025 Churchill Fellow, visiting the US and Canada this year to learn about laws which prevent victim-survivors of abuse being silenced. You can find her on Instagram at @reginafeatherstone.
I don't know why it still surprises me that these types of things exist. Glad to see we might make progress in getting rid of NDAs in abuse cases.