Here's how Theranos' Elizabeth Holmes will try to prove her innocence.
Lawyers for Balwani, who faces a separate fraud trial scheduled for 2022, filed a motion calling the accusations “outrageous,” and saying, “Ms. Holmes’ allegations are deeply offensive to Mr. Balwani, devastating personally to him and highly and unfairly prejudicial to his defense of this case.”
In general, coercive control describes a pattern of behaviors where an abuser uses incremental isolation, deprivation, denigration, humiliation, financial restrictions, and threats, among other strategies to gain power over their partner. It’s a relatively new term, coined around 2007, for an established pattern of abuse that relies more on intimidation and isolation than on physical violence, although occasional violence and the looming threat of more are often present.
Holmes will attempt to show that Balwani was the criminal mastermind behind Theranos’ deceptive practices, while she was the unwitting victim of his controlling and abusive behaviors and that her emotional duress affected her mental state, causing her to participate in the crimes she’s accused of committing. “I always start with the premise that I believe survivors, but the prosecution will have to delve into whether Holmes is, in fact, a survivor,” Seabrook says.
The claim of abuse is a rare defense in white-collar cases like this and used much more commonly in domestic violence and sex trafficking cases, according to Chitra Raghavan, a forensic psychologist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “There is little widespread knowledge of how coercive control is often used to force another party to commit crimes, except really in sex trafficking where it is well understood,” she says.
Given her status in Silicon Valley and her alleged history of manipulating investors in her business, Holmes may struggle to convince a jury she is a survivor of a relationship with elements of coercive control that caused her to participate in fraudulent business practices. At the same time, the case highlights a facet of domestic violence that is less high-profile than physical and sexual violence, but no less harmful when it comes to gaining control over a victim’s life.
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