Trey’s Law and the Woman Behind it

Elizabeth Phillips found her voice and ignited a movement

I started getting emails from Elizabeth Carlock Phillips in February of 2021 — five years ago this month. She wanted to tell me about sex abuse and its coverup at Kanakuk Kamps.

Elizabeth Phillips with a picture of her late brother Trey / Photo by Claire Collins via Facebook

That got my attention. Kanakuk is one of the largest — and most exclusive — Christian camps in the nation. Affluent Christian families from Dallas, Kansas City, St. Louis, and elsewhere have been sending their children there for decades. The camp’s leader, Joe White, was a larger-than-life person well known on the Christian speaking circuit. He spoke to tens of thousands at Promise Keepers events in the 1990s and early 2000s. He was a regular chapel speaker for NFL and other professional sports teams. He spoke at least twice at Liberty University’s Convocation, the school’s mandatory chapel service that attracts nearly 20,000 students.

So, if Elizabeth Phillips had information about sex abuse at Kanakuk, then this could be an important story.

But we get tips like this almost every day here at MinistryWatch. I already knew that one of Kanakuk’s counselors, Peter Newman, was convicted of child sex abuse and is spending the rest of his life in prison. By 2021, Newman’s wrongdoing was old news and already widely reported by MinistryWatch and others. I asked Elizabeth if she could just tell me what she wanted to say over the phone, or perhaps she could put it in an email.

No, she said. We needed to meet face-to-face.

That was when I discovered that Elizabeth Carlock Phillips was a force of nature. Not to be denied.

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Elizabeth Carlock and her brother Trey grew up in a socially prominent family in Dallas. She graduated from Highland Park High School and went to Southern Methodist University. She married Kevin Phillips, scion of a prominent Greensboro, N.C., family, known for generations for their civic involvement and philanthropy. A profile of Elizabeth in “D Magazine,” a glossy, high-end magazine serving the city of Dallas, described her this way: “Wearing a blue blazer that matched the azure sky, she had long, black hair that moved like she was a stand-in for a Pantene commercial. She seemed taller than she actually is, and that had nothing to do with her shoes. She moved with a confidence that most women in their 30s haven’t yet mastered.”

That was my experience of her when we met at a coffee shop in Salisbury, N.C., about halfway between Greensboro and my home in Charlotte, in March of 2021. She told me about her brother Trey, who was abused by Peter Newman, had been silenced by a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), and had subsequently died by suicide. She told me Kanakuk used NDAs to silence not just her brother but dozens of other sex abuse victims. She planned to “go public” with Trey’s story and the stories of other victims and survivors by launching a new website called Facts About Kanakuk that would include stories of abuse victims plus a petition demanding that Kanakuk release abuse victims from their non-disclosure agreements.

Within months, Elizabeth Phillips had almost singlehandedly elevated Kanakuk, and the role of non-disclosure agreements (and indirectly sex abuse in the church — the #ChurchToo movement) to a national conversation. In her home state of Texas, and in Kanakuk’s home state of Missouri, she championed the so-called Trey’s Law, which prohibits the use of nondisclosure agreements to silence survivors of child sexual abuse, sexual assault, or human trafficking in civil settlements, ensuring they can speak publicly about their experiences.

In 2025, both Texas and Missouri passed Trey’s Law. California and Tennessee have anti-NDA laws that pre-date Trey’s Law. Currently, five more states — Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Alabama — are considering a version of Trey’s Law. Where the law has been considered, it usually has overwhelming and bipartisan support.

The petition she started now has more than 11,000 verified signatures.

For all her successes, in some ways Elizabeth Phillips’ quest for justice is incomplete. Kanakuk claims to have implemented reforms. But Kanakuk’s senior leadership — including Joe White — remains in place, as do many of the board members who were around when Peter Newman perpetuated his sexual abuse there. If what happened on their watch had happened at a secular organization, there can be little doubt they would have been summarily fired.

So Kanakuk’s leaders are still on the job, but Elizabeth Phillips is still on the job, too. She testified before the Georgia Legislature last week, almost exactly five years after “Facts About Kanakuk” went public. She told the legislators — and the world — that her brother Trey “died by suicide in 2019 because he wasn’t allowed to have a voice.”

Kanakuk may have robbed Trey Carlock and other victims of their voices with non-disclosure agreements.

But, make no mistake, Elizabeth Carlock Phillips has certainly found hers.

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