From the Toronto Star – Lusiana Lukman: Boris Berlin sexually abused me during my piano lessons when I was 15
Trigger warning: this article contains explicit descriptions of sexual abuse Lusiana Lukman: Boris Berlin sexually abused me during my piano lessons when I was 15 February 7, 2026 | 6 min read Lusiana is the Executive Founding Director the Classical Music Conservatory. Click here to read the article directly from the Toronto Star By Lusiana Lukman Special to the Toronto Star Many years ago, a woman called me and asked if I would join her in complaining about a piano instructor at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music, who she said had sexually abused her when she was his student. I believed her. I, too, had been abused by this teacher. His name was Boris Berlin, and he was a legendary music educator whose instructional books remain a staple for learners of piano to this day. He began abusing me when I was only 15 years old, a recent visa student from Indonesia who barely spoke English and didn’t have any family or friends here. Like many serious music students, my future depended on my teacher’s approval. He had tremendous power over me, and he exploited it. Though I believed this woman, I could not bring myself to join her fight. I regret that now. I have come to understand in the years since that a great many students, in conservatories around the world, have been similarly exploited; that so many of us silently carry the shame; and that abusers thrive in this silence. I was not ready to tell my story then. But now I feel it’s important that I do. *** I came to Canada to study music in 1985 when I was just 14 years old. Music had always been my happy place. In Jakarta, I went to a lovely school, a second home, a safe place. When my home life was not so great — and it often wasn’t — I would go to the school where things were bright, full of music, friends and joyful memories. I saw music as a refuge. A young Lusiana in her home country of Indonesia. As I reached my teen years, I knew that I was gay, which is dangerous in Indonesia. So I asked my mother to let me go to Canada in search of a new safe space to study music. She agreed, came with me, and helped me settle in. My mother chose Boris Berlin as my instructor because he was the most expensive teacher at the RCM. “He must be the best,” she said. Back then, there was a published booklet with a list of teachers’ names and their hourly fees. He was also becoming quite famous with piano students around the world: he wrote the beginners’ piano books that were the series being used in Canada and elsewhere. Berlin started teaching at the RCM in 1928; by the time I was taught by him in the 1980s, he had already been teaching for more than 50 years. He died in 2001 before the ceremony honouring him with the Order of Canada was held. Berlin was around 78 years old when I first started taking classes with him. When you take a one-on-one piano lesson (or in any classical music studies) the relationship you have with your teacher is not only intense and close but very vulnerable. They tell you what to work on, how much to practice, what to play. They have the power to make your day, or make you miserable. They can make your career or ruin it. I remember the room where I took lessons with Berlin very clearly. He had a vertical filing cabinet next to the door of his studio. When I was in the room, he would open the door of that filing cabinet so it would block the tiny window onto his studio. No one could see in. Like any piano teacher, he would sit beside me and correct my hand position/posture. But soon, his hands started moving. During our sessions, he began touching my breasts, and other parts of my body. Eventually, he took my hand and forced it down his pants to touch his erect penis. He used my hand to rub his penis very firmly, then proceeded to take his penis out and tried to get me to do more. Days before each of my piano lessons, I would get a stomach-ache. I would have nightmares. I couldn’t sleep. I would practise my piano but couldn’t play well. I still had to function through classes and maintain good enough marks so that my student visa permit would be renewed by the RCM every year. It was mental and physical agony, but I thought that I just had to “deal with it” and move on. I always wondered how many others had been molested like me. Eventually, I became aware of whispers and warnings. A 14 year old Lusiana coming to Canada. I didn’t want to talk about what he was doing — I thought it was somehow my fault. But when I squeamishly told a friend or two about what Berlin had done, and that this was happening at almost every single lesson, I was told I wasn’t the only one. A close friend urged me to report the abuse. We set up a meeting with the RCM’s Director of Academic Studies, Peter Simon, who was responsible for all student complaints. I asked my friend to accompany me to the meeting and she agreed. We sat in front of Simon. The room was cold and bare other than the desk he was sitting behind and the two chairs my friend and I sat in. I felt very scared and small. I told him in detail about the sexual abuse. When I was finished, Simon asked if I wanted a different teacher. That was all he said. I was dumbfounded. I felt invisible and dismissed. As