Elizabeth Holmes has testified that she was emotionally and physically abused by her former lover and business partner, Sunny Balwani, part of her attempt to refute accusations that she lied about Theranos’s core blood-testing technology.
Monday marked Holmes’s fourth day on the stand as the continued to testify in her own defense in a fraud case that has gripped Silicon Valley.
After recounting how she met Balwani while she was still in high school, Holmes said she eventually fell under his sway after she dropped out of Stanford University in 2003 to found Theranos, the startup she led as CEO for the next 15 years.
Holmes, now 37, grew tearful as she testified that she was raped at Stanford, a factor she believes played a role in what she characterized as her later subservience to Balwani, now 56. The two became romantically involved in 2005 before Balwani became the chief operating officer at Theranos, a position he held from 2009 to 2016.
Even before joining Theranos, Balwani was regularly berating Holmes as an inept executive who needed to “kill” her former self in an effort to become more disciplined and focused, according to her testimony and contemporaneous notes with strict instructions for Holmes handwritten by Balwani.
“He felt like I came across as a little girl and thought I needed to be more serious and more pointed,” Holmes explained as she read through Balwani’s demands. They included spending at least 30 minutes each morning writing out her daily goals and never spending more than five minutes meeting with anyone unless she had written down a reason justifying the additional time.
If she didn’t do what Balwani said, Holmes said, he would yell and tell her he was “so disappointed in my mediocrity”.
At other times, Holmes said, Balwani would liken her to a “monkey flying a space ship” and tried to cut her off from her family in an alleged effort to ensure that she devoted herself full-time to Theranos. She also said he controlled her diet in an attempt to keep her “pure”. Sometimes after Balwani belittled her, Holmes testified, he would force her to have sex against her will.
The dramatic turn came during Holmes’s testimony before a jury weighing fraud charges that include swindling investors and customers while putting patients at risk by telling elaborate lies about the company’s development of an allegedly revolutionary blood-testing device. Holmes could face a prison sentence of up to 20 years if convicted.
In her testimony, Holmes said most people didn’t realize how much Balwani controlled her because most of his alleged abuse occurred outside the office. Her condemnation of Balwani contrasted with some of the messages she sent him. During a flurry of texts in April 2016, about a month before her romance with Balwani ended, Holmes quoted the poet Maya Angelou. “In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world there is no love for you like mine,” Holmes told him.
Under questioning by one of her attorneys, Holmes acknowledged that Balwani never told her what to say to the investors she is now accused of deceiving. She also testified that Balwani didn’t influence her discussions with Walgreens and Safeway, two major retailers that agreed to use Theranos’s blood-testing technology before backing out after discovering it wasn’t performing as she promised.
Holmes will return to the witness stand on Tuesday when prosecutors will get their first chance to grill her under oath.
Balwani faces fraud allegations mirroring those against Holmes in another trial scheduled to begin early next year.
Federal prosecutors wanted to try Balwani alongside Holmes, but the US district judge Edward Davila separated the proceedings because of the possibility that Holmes would blame some of her behavior on “intimate partner abuse”.
Jeffrey Coopersmith, Balwani’s lawyer, has vehemently denied Holmes’s abuse allegations. Although Coopersmith was present for Holmes’s testimony on Monday, Balwani couldn’t be there because he is prohibited from being in the courtroom in Holmes’s presence.
During the trial, jurors also have heard testimony from more than two dozen prosecution witnesses, including patients and investors who prosecutors have said Holmes deceived.
