A piano teacher to the stars who fled the country last month just before a jury found him guilty of sexually abusing a student was arrested in Australia, authorities said.
John Kaleel, 69, was taken into custody by Australian Federal Police on Oct. 31, according to Nicole Nishida, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the agency 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 national, was facing a retrial on multiple counts of sexually abusing a student last month when he fled the country on Oct. 8, according to the Sheriff’s Department.
Kaleel disappeared while jurors were deliberating at the Airport Courthouse. His attorney, Kate Hardie, said she last saw Kaleel after driving him home from court on Oct. 7. She declined to comment on his arrest.
It is expected that Kaleel will be returned to the U.S., where he faces a lengthy prison sentence after he was convicted of multiple counts of committing lewd acts with a child.
Kaleel taught private piano lessons in the U.S. for more than 25 years, and his clients included the children of the creators of beloved 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 when a student told detectives Kaleel had been acting inappropriately toward him for years.
The boy said he was 12 when Kaleel asked “to take measurements of [the victim’s] body parts, including his penis,” according to court records. Kaleel later convinced the boy that they should masturbate together while on a FaceTime call because that’s “what friends do,” records show.
When the victim was 15, prosecutors allege, Kaleel invited him over in September 2013 and they smoked marijuana together before having oral sex.
Kaleel initially pleaded no contest to one count of committing lewd acts with a child in 2016, but later appealed the deal on the grounds that he didn’t know how it would affect his immigration status. Kaleel has been a lawful permanent resident of the U.S. since the 1980s, according to Hardie, but found himself in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the plea.
Kaleel successfully appealed a deportation order and convinced an L.A. County judge to throw out the plea deal, but the L.A. County district attorney’s office decided to retry him.
“Mr. Kaleel has always maintained his innocence and that he took his initial plea bargain on the advice of counsel to avoid a harsher sentence should he lose at trial,” Hardie previously told The Times.
The district attorney’s office did not respond to a request for comment and has not discussed what, if any, efforts it has taken to return Kaleel to the U.S. since his arrest.
Court records show prosecutors filed an application for an extradition warrant last month.
James Queally
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