Last Updated on November 29, 2019, 3:05 AM AST by Anthony Morris
A man belonging to New Hampshire who filed a lawsuit accusing Dr Eugene Redmond Jr of molestation has asked a judge to attach Redmond’s Connecticut US$1.25 million in real estate in anticipation of a judgment.
According to Josh Kovner of the Hartford Courant, Redmond put his house and tennis court on Deepwood Drive in Hamden, Connecticut on sale right after a report commissioned by Yale University identified him this summer as having molested multiple Yale students and interns at his biomedical research compound on St Kitts, beginning in 1994.
Kenny Ballard, 55, of Keene, New Hampshire stated in his lawsuit that Redmond sexually assaulted him in 1976-1977 during an overnight ski trip at Sugarbush Resort in Vermont, around 18 years before the earliest allegation of abuse contained in the investigative report commissioned by Yale. The lawsuit says Ballard was sexually abused by Redmond on other occasions as well in 1977.
Redmond had won the trust of Ballard’s parents and had given the boy gifts of sports equipment, lavished praise on him and most of all gave him his time, according to the lawsuit.
In a motion filed earlier this month in Superior Court in New Haven, lawyers for Ballard say Redmond “is taking active steps to avoid payment on a likely judgment in this case” by putting his properties on the market soon after the release of the Yale report and then reducing the price by US$55,000 just days after Ballard’s complaint was filed.
Lawyers Marisa A. Bellair and Steven J. Errante of New Haven also note Redmond’s deep ties to Caribbean and St Kitts-Nevis.
Roderick MacLeish of Boston is also representing Ballard, the attorney is suing under a Vermont law that sets a cause of action for childhood sexual abuse regardless of whether a statute of limitations existed at the time of the abuse.
All the lawyers of Ballard are arguing that the Connecticut courts should apply the Vermont law to Ballard’s case.
A hearing on the request for a US$1.25 million attachment, has been set for December 16.
Redmond has failed to return multiple messages from The Courant seeking his response to Ballard’s claims. He retired last year.
According to the lawsuit, Redmond took the 12-year-old Ballard to an inn in Waitsfield, Vt. The two shared a room. Deep into the night, the boy’s eyes snapped awake. Redmond was performing oral sex, the lawsuit says.
Terrified and feeling powerless, “the plaintiff pretended to be asleep and just prayed it would end,” according to the lawsuit. Afterwards, the boy “experienced intense guilt, shame and embarrassment. He also felt confused about his sexual identity,” the lawsuit says.
“I was a broken young man, promiscuous with females to prove my sexuality to myself but unable to be intimate or commit to the relationship,” said Ballard.
Ballard said that he did not disclose about his experiences until 22 years after he was abused for the first time, revealing to his wife-to-be, Kelly Eagan, that he had been molested and that the person responsible was Redmond, the renowned Parkinson’s researcher. By the 1990s, Redmond was in the prime of his Yale career, a recipient of millions of dollars in grants from the National Institutes of Health and the head of the research foundation Axion.
Anthony Morris covers stories related to politics and regional developments. His in-depth reporting about governance and reforms makes him stand out in regional journalism, with a deep analysis of political trends and their impact on Caribbean communities.
