More On: Daryl Katz
In a civil suit, it is said that the owner of the Edmonton Oilers paid an underage ballet dancer for sex
According to a civil suit reported by CBC News, the owner of the Edmonton Oilers is accused of giving a teenage ballet dancer $75,000 in exchange for sexual favors.
In US District Court in Nevada, a third-party counterclaim says that Canadian billionaire Daryl Katz had a sexual relationship with ballet dancer Sage Humphries when she was still a minor.
The counterclaim is in response to a lawsuit that Humphries and other ballet dancers filed against dance teacher Mitchell Taylor Button and his wife, Dusty Button, in 2021, accusing the couple of sexual abuse. The lawsuit was filed by Humphries and other ballet dancers.
The couple filed the third-party counterclaim earlier this month. It says that the Buttons had a consensual "throuple sexual relationship" with Humphries when she was 18. It also says that Katz and two other men had sexual relationships with Humphries when she was younger than 18. The lawsuit tries to get the men to pay for any damage.
“Humphries was literally a child prostitute to a billionaire,” the claim alleges, “and her mother assisted her in laundering the money she was paid and in trafficking her to Katz.”
CBC News got a copy of the court filing that has a picture of texts that Katz and Humphries are said to have sent to each other when Katz was 53 and Humphries was 17. For the civil suit, it wasn't clear how the messages were found.
“If my guys send u funds will u spend it on/keep it for yourself?” Katz allegedly wrote. “And just between us? Even though u r wise beyond your years given our respective ages it would be taken the wrong way.”
“Yes .. Just between us,” Humphries allegedly replies.
“OK will have one of my guys email u. He will send you 50K,” Katz then allegedly replied.
Katz's lawyer, Robert Klieger, said that the accusations made against his client were "false and slanderous."
He told CBC News that Katz and Humphries never had a sexual relationship, even though they met twice in 2016 to talk about an idea Humphries was trying to sell to Katz's film company, Silver Pictures.
CBC News said that Klieger said he couldn't tell if the texts in the court filing were real or not, but Katz did set up a business deal to send $75,000 to Humphries.
“They ultimately decided to pass on the project. But during the period of time that the project was under consideration, they asked for some help to keep with the funding of the project to keep it going. And that’s the $75,000 that is at issue,” said Klieger.
The lawyer for Humphries and the other dancers suing Taylor Button and his wife dismissed the counterclaim as a “meaningless sideshow” in a statement to CBC News.
“As is typical of abusers facing serious litigation, the Buttons have filed counterclaims that distract from and distort the truth and weaponize the serious allegations of abuse that have been brought against them,” wrote lawyer Sigrid McCawley.
“Their counterclaims falsely implicate others and are an unfounded attempt to portray the women they abused as liars.”
An attorney representing Taylor Button and his wife, who was once a principal member of The Boston Ballet, declined comment to CBC News.
