Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein used lengthy nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) attached to hefty monetary settlements to prevent accusers from coming forward with reports of his alleged serial sexual predation, as detailed in a new story from The New Yorkers Ronan Farrow published on Tuesday.

Farrow, who previously detailed the extensive bullying mechanisms used by Weinstein to discredit his accusers, found that while such agreements are common, the ones that Weinstein made accusers, as well as employees, sign appeared to be have been unusually stringent and sophisticated.

Model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, who in an undercover police investigation in 2015 captured audio of Weinstein admitting to groping her , signed an agreement that essentially allowed Weinstein to conceal all of her evidence proving his abusive behavior, according to Farrow:

Gutierrezs settlement, a copy of which I reviewed, bears Weinsteins signature and orders the destruction of all copies of audio recordings of Weinstein admitting to the groping. Gutierrez agreed to give her phone and any other devices that might have contained copies of the recording to Kroll, another private-security firm retained by Weinstein. She also agreed to surrender the passwords to her e-mail account and other forms of digital communication that could have been used to spirit out copies. A sworn statement, pre-signed by Gutierrez, is attached to the agreement, to be released in the event of any breach. It states that the behavior Weinstein admits to in the audio tape never happened.

The Weinstein confidentiality agreement is perhaps the most usurious one I have seen in decades of practice, an attorney familiar with the agreement told me.

The agreements are yet another mechanism that perpetrators can use to assert power over their victims and can contribute to serial allegations being swept under the rug for years, as was the case for Weinstein.

A forever N.D.A. should not be legal, longtime Weinstein executive Irwin Reiter told Farrow. People should not be made to live with that. Hes created so many victims that have been burdened for so many years, and its just not right.

The New York Times Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey have similarly described elaborate settlements and nondisclosure agreements that they uncovered in their reporting on Weinstein.

Sometimes the settlements are much more elaborate in what they require, Twohey said on NPRs Fresh Air last week. You know, if somebody comes to you, if the press ever comes to you for comment, you have to say positive things about me.

Part of their reporting process in breaking their initial story on Weinstein involved persuading his employees to break their agreements, Kantor said in the interview.

We had a lot of sources who had signed NDAs, like, even company employees who had signed NDAs. And they would say, Oh, you know, Jodi, Megan, you know, Id love to talk to you, but I cant because I have an NDA, Kantor recounted. And we would essentially have to, you know, convince them to break the NDA, which, by the way, both Megan and I have done a lot in our reporting over the years. So many companies now are so NDAed up that its become a little bit of a routine conversation for us.