L.A. piano teacher who fled during sex abuse trial caught in Australia
The stars’ piano teacher, who fled the country last month just before a jury found him guilty of sexually assaulting a student, has been arrested in Australia, authorities said.
John Kaleel, 69, was taken into custody by the Australian Federal Police on October 31, according to Nicole Nishida, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, which is investigating him in the United States.
It was not clear where Kaleel was arrested and Australian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kaleel, an Australian citizen, was facing retrial last month on multiple charges of sexually assaulting a student when he fled the country on Oct. 8, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
Kaleel disappeared while jurors were deliberating in the Airport Courthouse. His lawyer, Kate Hardie, said he last saw Kaleel on October 7 after taking him home from court. He declined to comment on his arrest.
Kaleel is expected to be deported back to the US where he faces a lengthy prison sentence after being found guilty of multiple counts of committing obscene acts with a child.
Kaleel has been giving private piano lessons throughout the United States for more than 25 years, and his clients have included children of the creators of hit television series such as “Mad Men” and “Orange Is the New Black.” But he became the subject of a Sheriff’s Department investigation in 2015 after a student told detectives that Kaleel had behaved inappropriately towards him for years.
The boy said he was 12 when Kaleel asked him to “take measurements.” [the victim’s] Kaleel then convinced the boy that they should masturbate together during the FaceTime call because “that’s what friends do,” according to court records.
Prosecutors allege Kaleel invited the victim over in September 2013, when she was 15, and they smoked marijuana together before engaging in oral sex.
Kaleel initially pleaded no contest to an allegation that he committed lewd acts with a child in 2016, but later challenged the settlement on the grounds that he did not know how it would affect his immigration status. Kaleel has been a legal permanent resident of the United States since the 1980s, but after the plea he found himself in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to Hardie.
Kaleel successfully appealed the deportation order and convinced a Los Angeles County judge to revoke the plea agreement, but the LA County prosecutor’s office decided to retry him.
Hardie previoulsy told The Times: “Mr Kaleel has always maintained his innocence and took the initial plea bargain on the advice of counsel to avoid a harsher sentence should he lose at trial.”
The district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment and has not said what efforts have been made to extradite Kaleel to the United States since his arrest.
Court records show prosecutors filed for an extradition order last month.
