Elizabeth Holmes plans to claim at a trial ex-boyfriend and Theranos business partner abused her

August 31, 2021: -In a bombshell revelation before her criminal fraud trial, defense attorneys for Elizabeth Holmes says that she’s suffered a “decade-long campaign of psychological abuse” from her ex-boyfriend and business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.

“Balwani’s control is including monitoring her calls, text messages, and emails; physical violence, like throwing hard, sharp objects at her, restricting her sleep, monitoring her movements; and insists that any success she got was because of him,” defense attorneys for former Theranos CEO Holmes writes.

The revelation is contained in documents unsealed on Saturday by U.S. District Judge Edward Davila. Holmes met Balwani when she was 18. He joined her blood-testing startup, Theranos, in 2009 as president and chief operating officer. The pair, who face ten counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy, later admitted in deposition tapes that they never told investors of their relationship.

Both are pleading not guilty and deny any wrongdoing in connection with what the federal prosecutors call a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors, doctors, and patients.

Attorneys for Holmes plan to “introduce evidence that Mr. Balwani verbally disparaged and withdrew ‘affection if she displeased him;’ controlled what she ate, how she dressed, and the amount of money she could spend, interacting with dominating her and erasing her capacity to decide,” according to the unsealed filings.

“Ms. Holmes’ allegations are offensive to Mr. Balwani, devastating personally to him,” Jefferey Coopersmith, an attorney for Balwani, writes.

The documents also answer the questions regarding Holmes plans to testify. “Ms. Holmes is to testify herself to the reasons why she believed, relied on, and deferred to Mr. Balwani,” her attorneys added.

The filings also reveal that Holmes is planning to argue she suffers from mental health issues, which include post-traumatic stress disorder, intimate-partner abuse syndrome, anxiety, and depression because of her relationship with Balwani.

Balwani vehemently denied the allegations, citing them as a reason for his request for a separate trial, which was granted.

Lawyers for Holmes also asked to separate their trials, saying she “cannot be near him without suffering physical distress.”

“She is arguing that if she is tried together with Mr. Balwani, she will suffer stress and problems physically that will manifest visually, such that she will not appear to the jury in her true sense.”

The different trial is a strategy many legal analysts have said was an important ruling for Holmes.