A piano teacher to the stars who fled the country last month just before a jury found him guilty of sexually abusing a student has been arrested in Australia, authorities said.
John Kaleel, 69, was arrested by the Australian Federal Police on October 31, according to Nicole Nishida, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the agency investigating him in the United States.
It was unclear where Kaleel was arrested and Australian authorities did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kaleel, an Australian citizen, was facing retrial on multiple charges 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 lawyer, Kate Hardie, said she last saw Kaleel after driving him home from court on October 7. He declined to comment on his arrest.
Kaleel is expected to be returned to the United States, where he faces a lengthy prison sentence after being found guilty of multiple charges of committing lewd acts with a child.
Kaleel taught private piano lessons in the United States 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 that Kaleel had been acting inappropriately toward him for years.
The boy said he was 12 years old when Kaleel asked him to “take safety measures.” [the victim’s] body parts, including his penis,” according to court records. Kaleel later convinced the boy that they should masturbate together during 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 a charge of committing lewd acts with a child in 2016, but later appealed the plea, claiming 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, according to Hardie, but found himself in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement following the declaration.
Kaleel successfully appealed a deportation order and convinced a Los Angeles County judge to throw out the plea deal, but the Los Angeles County district attorney's office decided to retry him.
“Mr. Kaleel has always maintained his innocence and accepted his initial plea deal on the advice of his attorney to avoid a harsher sentence should he lose his trial,” Hardie previously told The Times.
The district attorney's office did not respond to a request for comment and has not discussed what efforts, if any, they have made to return Kaleel to the United States since his arrest.
Court records show prosecutors filed a request for an extradition order last month.
