FKA twigs settled her landmark sexual battery and coercive control lawsuit against Shia LaBeouf in July 2025. In March 2026, she sued him again; this time to break the non-disclosure agreement she says he is using to silence her. Her new filing argues that the NDA violates California’s STAND Act, which prohibits confidentiality clauses in settlements involving sexual assault. The case has become a defining 2026 example of post-separation abuse through the legal system.
If you have ever been silenced by a settlement, you already understand the heart of this story. So does anyone who has watched an abuse perpetrator use the legal system to keep punishing them long after you walked away.
What follows is the timeline, the law, and the framework. The case maps almost exactly onto the research on post-separation abuse and litigation as a tool of coercive control.
Table of Contents
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on December 11, 2020, in the days following FKA twigs’s initial filing against Shia LaBeouf. It has been substantially rewritten and updated on May 10, 2026, to reflect significant developments in the case — including the July 2025 out-of-court settlement, Shia LaBeouf’s December 2025 secret arbitration demand, and FKA twigs’s March 25, 2026 lawsuit seeking to invalidate the non-disclosure agreement under California’s STAND Act. The framework of analysis has also been updated to reflect current peer-reviewed research on post-separation abuse and litigation as a tool of coercive control.
What Happened: A Five-Year Timeline of the FKA Twigs and Shia LaBeouf Case
The 2020 lawsuit was only the beginning. The events that followed reveal a clear pattern.
December 2020: The Original Lawsuit
On December 11, 2020, Tahliah Debrett Barnett filed a complaint against Shia LaBeouf in the Los Angeles Superior Court. The British singer and actor is known as FKA twigs. She was joined by Karolyn Pho, a former girlfriend of LaBeouf. The complaint cited sexual battery, battery, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and gross negligence.
FKA twigs and LaBeouf met on the set of Honey Boy in 2018 and were in a relationship for roughly nine months. In her filing, twigs described an early “charm offensive” that gave way to what she called “relentless” abuse. She alleged non-fatal strangulation, isolation from family and friends, and knowing transmission of a sexually transmitted infection. She also alleged that LaBeouf forced her to follow an ever-shifting set of rules.
Karolyn Pho, who dated LaBeouf from 2010 to 2011, alleged battery and emotional abuse during her own relationship with him.
July 2025: The Out-of-Court Settlement
After nearly five years of delayed trial dates, FKA twigs and Shia LaBeouf reached an out-of-court settlement on July 22, 2025. The case was dismissed with prejudice. Both parties released a joint statement saying they had agreed to settle and wished each other “personal happiness, professional success and peace in the future.” The terms remained private.
The settlement included a non-disclosure agreement. That detail would become the centerpiece of everything that followed.
December 2025: The Secret Arbitration Demand
In December 2025, LaBeouf’s legal team filed a confidential arbitration demand alleging that twigs had violated the NDA. The trigger was an interview in which a journalist asked twigs whether she felt safe now that the lawsuit was behind her. She answered, “No, I wouldn’t say I feel safe.”
LaBeouf’s team sought what twigs’s attorney described as an “exorbitant” sum in damages. The arbitration was later dismissed.
March 2026: The New Lawsuit
On March 25, 2026, FKA twigs filed a new lawsuit in the Los Angeles Superior Court. Represented by attorney Mathew Rosengart — the lawyer who helped end Britney Spears’s conservatorship — she asked the court to declare the NDA unenforceable.
The filing argues that the confidentiality terms violate California’s Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act. Critically, the new lawsuit does not seek monetary damages. It seeks the right to speak.
What Is California’s STAND Act?
The STAND Act — formally Senate Bill 820 — is a California law passed in 2018 in the wake of the #MeToo movement. It prohibits provisions in settlement agreements that prevent the disclosure of factual information about sexual assault, sexual harassment, or sex discrimination.
The law was a direct response to a documented pattern. Secret settlements, particularly those used by Harvey Weinstein and other high-profile perpetrators, had enabled decades of repeat abuse. By silencing one survivor, NDAs frequently exposed the next survivor to the same perpetrator.
FKA twigs’s legal team argues that the NDA in her settlement does exactly what the STAND Act was passed to prevent. LaBeouf’s lawyers have argued that the act does not apply because her 2020 lawsuit cited “sexual battery” rather than “sexual assault.” Twigs’s team has called that distinction “preposterous,” pointing out that, legally, assault is a precondition of battery.
Why This Case Matters: Litigation as Coercive Control
To understand why this case has resonated with survivors so deeply, the framework of coercive control is essential.
Stark’s Framework
Coercive control was named and theorized by sociologist Susan Schechter.1 She introduced the concept to forensic social worker Evan Stark, who developed it into the framework now used internationally.2 In Coercive Control: How Men Entrap Women in Personal Life, Stark argues that abuse is rarely a series of isolated incidents. Most often, it is a pattern of intimidation, isolation, and control (Stark, 2007).
Stark describes coercive control as creating “mini regimes of patriarchy” inside intimate relationships. The point is to remove a woman’s freedom — her movements, her finances, her relationships, her ability to speak. It is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men against women, even though documented exceptions exist.
Post-Separation Abuse: When the Relationship Ends but the Abuse Does Not
Leaving an abusive partner does not end the abuse. Peer-reviewed research now defines post-separation abuse as an ongoing, willful pattern of intimidation. It includes legal abuse, economic abuse, threats and endangerment to children, isolation and discrediting, and harassment and stalking (Spearman, Hardesty & Campbell, 2023).3
The key attributes identified in the literature include fear and intimidation, domination, intrusion, omnipresence, and the manipulation of legal and institutional systems. The FKA twigs case is a near-textbook example of the last of these.
The Legal Abuse Scale and What It Measures
In 2022, Ellen Gutowski and Lisa Goodman published the Legal Abuse Scale in the Journal of Family Violence. The scale measures how perpetrators use the courts as an instrument of continued coercive control after separation. Two subscales emerged: harm to self and motherhood, and harm to finances (Gutowski & Goodman, 2022).4
Litigation abuse can include filing meritless motions, dragging out proceedings, weaponizing settlement terms, and using arbitration or court costs to financially exhaust a survivor. Practitioner experience confirms what the research describes: the legal system, instead of offering protection, frequently becomes a continuation of the relationship.
Seven years of direct work with survivors of severe coercive control shows the same pattern again and again. The man who could no longer reach his ex-partner physically reaches her through paperwork. He times his filings. He extracts settlements with confidentiality clauses. Then he uses those clauses as a leash.
The NDA as a Silencing Tool
An NDA in a sexual abuse settlement is not a neutral document. The American Civil Liberties Union and survivor-advocacy organizations have argued for years that broad NDAs in these contexts function as legalized silencing.
The pattern is well documented. A survivor agrees to confidentiality in exchange for a settlement. Years later, she gives an interview, posts on social media, or speaks at an event. The perpetrator’s legal team files for arbitration, sometimes secretly, alleging breach. Damages are demanded. The survivor faces a choice: stay silent, or risk financial ruin.
This is why the STAND Act exists. And it is why the FKA twigs case has implications far beyond two people.
Sia’s Allegations and the Pattern of Multiple Victims
In December 2020, the Australian singer Sia spoke publicly about her own experiences with LaBeouf. She described being “hurt emotionally” and said she had been “conned into an adulterous relationship” by him. She later said in an interview with the Sunday Times that LaBeouf had been simultaneously dating her and twigs while still married.
The pattern of multiple women coming forward is one of the strongest signals research identifies in serial perpetrators of coercive control. Each woman, isolated by an NDA or by shame, believes the abuse happened only to her. When the silence breaks, the pattern becomes visible.
Why the 2026 Filing Is Different
The first lawsuit asked the court to compensate FKA twigs for what had been done to her. The second asks the court to give her back her voice.
This distinction matters. Survivor-led legal action that targets the silencing mechanism itself, rather than seeking damages, signals a strategic shift. Survivors of celebrity-perpetrated abuse are beginning to attack the structures that protect their abusers.
It also signals something quieter and more important. She is not returning to court for money. She is returning for the right to name what happened. That survivor has moved further along the recovery process. She is not where she was when the abuse began.
What This Means for Survivors
If you are a survivor reading this, several things are worth holding.
First, the legal system is not neutral. Research on family court and civil litigation in domestic abuse cases shows a consistent pattern. Survivors who turn to the courts for protection often find themselves subjected to a new layer of harm (Gutowski & Goodman, 2022). This is not your fault. It is a structural problem.
Second, NDAs in cases involving sexual assault, battery, or harassment are more limited than perpetrators’ lawyers often imply. California, New York, Tennessee, and a growing number of US states have passed laws restricting their enforceability. Always consult a lawyer who specializes in survivor representation before assuming an NDA is iron-clad.
Third, the urge to settle quickly — just to end it — is a survivor response, not a moral failing. Practitioner experience shows that many women settle for very real reasons. They cannot afford to keep fighting. They cannot bear another year of his presence in their life. They cannot face cross-examination by his lawyers. The decision to settle is not a confession that the abuse was small.
Fourth, recovery is possible. The frameworks I have developed — the Coercive Trauma Recovery Method™ and the stages of recovery — address exactly this kind of layered, prolonged harm. The legal exhaustion is part of what the body and the nervous system have to process. It is not separate from the abuse. It is the abuse, extended.
Related Links
Frequently Asked Questions
FKA twigs filed a new lawsuit on March 25, 2026. The trigger was a confidential arbitration demand filed by Shia LaBeouf’s legal team in December 2025. They alleged she had violated the non-disclosure agreement in their July 2025 settlement. The arbitration was reportedly prompted by a media interview in which she said she did not feel safe. Her new lawsuit asks the court to declare the NDA unenforceable under California’s STAND Act. That law prohibits confidentiality clauses in settlements involving sexual assault, harassment, or sex discrimination.
The Stand Together Against Non-Disclosures Act is a 2018 California law. It prohibits provisions in settlement agreements that prevent the disclosure of factual information about sexual assault, sexual harassment, or sex discrimination. It was passed in response to the role secret settlements played in shielding perpetrators like Harvey Weinstein from public accountability. A related 2021 law, the Silenced No More Act, expanded the protections to cover other forms of workplace harassment and discrimination.
Yes. Peer-reviewed research describes this as legal abuse or litigation abuse. It is recognized as a key form of post-separation coercive control. The Legal Abuse Scale, developed by Ellen Gutowski and Lisa Goodman in 2022, measures it directly. The scale captures how perpetrators use court processes to harm survivors financially and personally after separation. Filing meritless motions, weaponizing settlement terms, and prolonging litigation are all documented tactics.
The case did not go to trial. After nearly five years of delayed trial dates, FKA twigs and Shia LaBeouf reached an out-of-court settlement on July 22, 2025. Twigs requested that the case be dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. The terms of the settlement remained private and included a non-disclosure agreement, which is now the subject of her 2026 lawsuit.
Yes. Karolyn Pho was a co-plaintiff in the original 2020 lawsuit. The Australian singer Sia spoke publicly in December 2020 about emotional harm she said she experienced during a relationship with LaBeouf. She later confirmed in a Sunday Times interview that LaBeouf had been simultaneously involved with her and twigs while still married. The pattern of multiple women coming forward is consistent with what research describes in serial perpetrators of coercive control.
Post-separation abuse is defined in peer-reviewed research as an ongoing, willful pattern of intimidation of a former intimate partner. It includes legal abuse, economic abuse, threats and endangerment to children, isolation and discrediting, and harassment and stalking (Spearman, Hardesty & Campbell, 2023). It frequently exploits the legal system, custody arrangements, and shared finances. The end of the relationship does not end the abuse – it changes its form.
Survivors should consult a lawyer who specializes in survivor representation before assuming an NDA is enforceable. Recent legislation has restricted enforceability in California, New York, Tennessee, Alabama, Missouri, and several other US states. The new laws cover settlements involving sexual assault, harassment, or abuse. The federal Speak Out Act of 2022 also limits the enforceability of pre-dispute NDAs in workplace sexual misconduct cases. Survivors are not always as silenced as they have been told they are.
References
- Schechter, S. (1982). Women and Male Violence: The Vision and Struggles of the Battered Women’s Movement. South End Press. ↩︎
- Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press. ↩︎
- Spearman, K. J., Hardesty, J. L., & Campbell, J. (2023). Post-separation abuse: A concept analysis. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 79(4), 1225–1246. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.15310 ↩︎
- Gutowski, E. R., & Goodman, L. A. (2022). Coercive control in the courtroom: The Legal Abuse Scale (LAS). Journal of Family Violence, 38(3), 527–542. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-022-00408-3 ↩︎
