One Survivor's Story - Raped by her ballet teacher
By Jill Tucker 
Viktor Kabaniaev, shown at Zellerbach Hall in 2005, pleaded not guilty in sexual assault suits by two former ballet students. Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle 2005 Photo: Michael Macor / The Chronicle 2005 Viktor Kabaniaev, shown at Zellerbach Hall in 2005, pleaded not guilty in sexual assault suits by two former ballet students.
At age 3, she had begged her parents to let her do ballet.
She loved the clothes and the shoes and the music, and at her first lesson, a year later, the little girl with a passion for frilly socks and Disney princesses wore a tutu with sequins, standing out among the other students in plain black leotards and pink tights.
As she grew and improved, she dreamed of becoming a professional ballerina, so at age 12, her parents agreed to private lessons, paying renowned Russian ballet teacher and choreographer Viktor Kabaniaev $75 an hour for twice-a-week sessions, first at her house and later at a private studio in Contra Costa County.
He was a demanding coach, internationally revered, so she said she didn’t tell anyone when about a year later, as puberty set in, he asked if she had body hair and whether she had a boyfriend or had gotten her period. Not long after, as he adjusted her positioning, he started putting his hand on her butt, she said, and touching her crotch, his fingers lingering.
And then, one day during a water break, she said, he pulled her into the locker room of the private studio.
“He basically took off my clothes and started having sex with me,” she said, describing how her face was pressed against the shower wall. She was 13.
“It was painful, a few minutes and then it was done, and we went straight back to the lesson,” said the woman, now 29. “From that point forward, I had a huge secret.”
The teenage girl kept the secret, even as he assaulted her again and again, she said — during the lessons, in a costume closet during an after-hours visit to the Contra Costa Ballet School, at her family’s vacation home — over the next two years. And then she remained silent for 14 years.
Kabaniaev, 54, was arrested in January and has pleaded not guilty to 21 felony counts related to her case, including 12 counts of forcible lewd acts upon a child, seven counts of sexual assault of a child and two counts of forcible rape, acts allegedly committed between September 2000 and 2003. He also pleaded not guilty to a separate count of a lewd act on a child related to a second woman, occurring sometime between May 2010 and May 2011, according to the complaint.
He was initially held on $10 million bond, but Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Theresa Canepa, citing public safety, denied bail at a hearing in April. He has been held at the County Jail in Martinez since his Jan. 26 arrest.
Kabaniaev has received strong support from the ballet community since his arrest, with students, parents, teachers and professional dancers from around the world expressing outrage and disbelief. Some have suggested the charges must be based on lies.
For the first time, both former ballet students are speaking publicly, sharing their allegations with The Chronicle, encouraging others to come forward. The Chronicle has agreed not to name the women because they may be victims of a sex crime.
A well-regarded principal ballet dancer in the former Soviet Union and an internationally renowned choreographer, Kabaniaev has trained hundreds of young girls in California, according to his attorney. He was teaching at the Westlake School for the Performing Arts in Daly City before his arrest and was still listed — with his photo and biography — as a teacher on the school’s website last week.
His arrest shocked the ballet world, and his supporters submitted more than 60 letters to back a motion seeking to have his bail reduced.
“This dastardly crime does not reflect the character of Mr. Kabaniaev,” wrote longtime friend Alexander Sinelnikov, who runs a ballet school in Germany. “I am more than sure that his whole situation can be blamed on people who are not happy with his success.”
“I believe I’m a pretty good judge of character, and felt perfectly at ease with Viktor training my daughter,” said Michael Finn, a Los Angeles police officer, whose daughter moved to the Bay Area for a year to train with him. “Viktor became a close personal family friend, and I believe the accusations levied against him are fictitious and totally without merit.”
Such words of support for Kabaniaev are hard to hear, said the first woman in the case, adding that she has struggled for years to come to terms with what happened and the guilt she’s felt.
“He kept saying things like ‘This is our secret. No one will understand. No one will ever love you like I love you,’” she said. “He would say things like, ‘Don’t tell anyone, because I’d go to jail, because no one would understand we love each other.’”
He told her that it was OK to have secrets, that “everyone has secrets,” she said.
Even after she stopped taking lessons from Kabaniaev and the assaults stopped, the woman said, ballet and her body became something she hated.
“I felt so dirty, and disgusted and repulsed by what was going on,” she said. “I felt I was a disgusting person and that if people knew that about me, no one would like me.”
She said she thought she would die with her secret.
Last year, she watched “Spotlight,” a movie about the Boston Globe’s investigation into the Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal, and felt heartbroken for the victims who blamed themselves and stayed silent out of shame. And then, in the last 10 minutes of the film, the woman said, she realized she was just like them.
She said a therapist urged her to report her former ballet teacher to the authorities, saying he could still be working around children. He was.
The woman, who no longer lives in the Bay Area, reported the alleged assaults, and the Walnut Creek Police Department opened an investigation. Late last year, she said, she carried a surreptitious recording device when she confronted her former ballet coach at an East Bay cafe, as undercover detectives waited nearby and listened in.
“He said, ‘I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I’ll kill myself. I’ll give you all my money,’” she said, recounting the conversation. She said she asked him why he thought it was OK to have sex with her.
“We spent so much time together, so of course there was an attraction,” she said he told her.
Within weeks, police arrested Kabaniaev at his apartment in San Bruno.
The woman said she had never wanted her parents to find out, knowing they would be devastated, but with his arrest imminent, she told them.
Nearly four months later, her parents are still coming to terms with what she told them. Kabaniaev had been a frequent guest in their home for dinner, and, with his girlfriend at the time — also a ballet instructor — had spent vacations with them.
They had paid Kabaniaev nearly $17,000 over about four years to coach their daughter.
“I was horrified. I never even suspected him,” the woman’s mother told The Chronicle. “He definitely wound his way into our family.”
The woman’s father recounted the time he stopped by the practice studio during a lesson, but he found it empty. His daughter burst out of the bathroom and told her father that Kabaniaev was violently ill.
“My first thought was how can I help him. I drove him home,” her father said. “What I just can’t believe looking back was how stupid I was to let my guard down that much.”
He realized what had actually happened when police asked him about his memories of that incident after his daughter provided her account to investigators.
“I didn’t provide for the physical protection of my daughter,” said her father, tears in his eyes, as he sat with his wife in a Martinez cafe after the April bail hearing. “Not only did he rob her of her childhood, but also her innocence and, eventually, her love of ballet.”
At age 17, their daughter abandoned her dream of becoming a professional ballerina.
“At 13, I thought if I told my parents, this would ruin my life,” she said. “In my mind, I would lose all my friends at school. My world was over if I told.”
The woman, who is married and living in Southern California, said she wishes she could tell her younger self that telling would have been better than suffocating with the secret.
The second woman in the case is now in her 20s and said she didn’t tell anyone her secret, either. She said that she was 13 or 14 when Kabaniaev took her to his new apartment in San Bruno during a break between classes at the Westlake school in Daly City.
“He was showing me his bedroom,” she said, adding that he indicated she could spend the night sometime and have fun with him on the bed. The woman said she was stunned and just ignored the comment.
Kabaniaev then put on a DVD of a ballet performance, and as she watched it, he started touching her from behind, she said.
“He was lightly stroking his hands all over me and that was freaking me out,” she said, adding he touched her inner thigh near her crotch and what she said were her “nonexistent breasts” as well.
“I didn’t even tell my parents that happened,” she said. “I didn’t want them to be worried; I just kind of wanted to forget about it.”
In January, she read about his arrest and decided to come forward.
“I didn’t want people to think she’s making up lies,” the Bay Area woman said. “I just wanted to tell my story as well.”
Both women said that if there are other people like them, they hope they too will come forward.
Walnut Creek police Detective Gabriel Mauro said the ballet community is tight-knit, which could discourage potential victims from coming forward.
“It’s hard for parents,” he said. “They take responsibility for it as well when they hear these things.”
Gabriel Mauro, the Walnut Creek police detective who served as lead investigator, says cases like this are also hard on the parents, who take responsibility. Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle Photo: Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle
Gabriel Mauro, the Walnut Creek police detective who served as lead investigator, says cases like this are also hard on the parents, who take responsibility.
While there were two additional possible victims identified during the investigation, they declined to cooperate, according to the Contra Costa district attorney’s office.
Kabaniaev’s attorney, Kenneth Wine, said he’s considering appealing the denial of bail. He argued that the allegations date back several years and are related to only two individuals, even though his client taught for two decades without complaint.
“This is a well-respected and really beloved ballet teacher, who has had hundreds and hundreds of students, if not thousands of students, and he has complaints by two, one more serious than the other,” Wine said. “It’s a long way until judgment, and every person charged with a crime deserves the presumption of innocence.”
After learning that the charges involved allegations of forcible rape and the recorded apology, some of Kabaniaev’s supporters were taken aback.
“I would have never actually ever thought that from him. I still don’t,” said Finn, the Los Angeles police officer. “If it’s true and actually happened, let the system take care of it.”
“I know him as a really good person, really good friend,” Sinelnikov said. “It’s really difficult to believe all this.”
Pedophiles make a habit of grooming everyone around them so they will be above suspicion.
The first woman in the case said she is telling her story to provide support to anyone else who might come forward, and to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
“When you lose the ability to be carefree because you have to keep a secret, you lose your childhood,” she said. “I often wonder who I’d be if I hadn’t been ashamed of myself my whole life up until now.
“I wonder if I’d still be a ballet dancer. I wonder if it would be easier to be happy.”
Contra Costa Co., CA
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