Jordan Watt says David Beales did not have sex with the student until she had turned 16 and he was no longer in a position of trust and authority.
This story deals with alleged sexual offenses involving a minor.
A verdict could come next week in B.C. Supreme Court in the case of the former artistic director and owner of a Victoria ballet school who is accused of sexual exploitation of his teenage dance student.
David Chaplin Beales has pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual interference, sexual exploitation and making sexually explicit material available to a minor in connection with alleged incidents from 2019 to 2022.
The offence of sexual interference relates to sexual touching of a person under 16, while sexual exploitation is the sexual touching of a person who is 16 or 17 when the accused is in a position of trust or authority.
The trial is scheduled to reconvene next Wednesday, after closing arguments last week.
Beales was the artistic director of the Maple Leaf School of Russian Ballet in Vic West around the time when the alleged incidents involving a 15-year-old student began.
Defence lawyer Jordan Watt is arguing that Beales did not have sex with the student until she had turned 16 — the legal age of consent — and that he was no longer in a position of trust and authority over her when the two had a sexual relationship.
The dancer, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, has testified that she had her first sexual encounter with Beales in December 2019, when she was 15 and Beales was in his 30s.
She testified that on the morning of Dec. 19, 2019, she had dropped by the ballet studio to pick up some things she had left the night before, and ended up performing oral sex after Beales initiated sexual touching by moving her hands to touch his erect penis.
Beales denies that any sexual activity took place that morning.
He testified that the dancer had come to the studio to profess her love for him, and the two only talked before she left for school, Watt said.
The relationship between Beales and the dancer only turned sexual after she turned 16, he said.
In his closing arguments, Watt said Beales’ recollection of events shows a clear progression of romance — drives in Beacon Hill Park, nights of watching movies at his place — before the two officially entered a relationship in April 2020 and began to have sex two months later.
Watt said the court is “certainly” considering a case in which a dance teacher entered a relationship with his student. However, he argued their teacher-student relationship had ended by the time they began “an intimate boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.”
Beales denied that he ever had sex with the dancer in the ballet studio, where his mother was living at the time of the alleged incidents.
Around the time the alleged incidents began, Beales, a father of three, had separated from his wife, and his school was sold to his parents, Watt said.
Shortly after his separation, Beales began a public romantic relationship with another dancer, Clare Gillesse, he said.
Gillesse is the current artistic director of Maple Leaf School of Russian Ballet.
Watt suggested that Beales’ new relationship with Gillesse had made the young dancer jealous.
“You wanted that relationship with Clare to end,” he said to the woman during cross-examination. “You wanted to be exclusive with Mr. Beales.”
The woman denied the claim. “Are you asking me, as a 15-year-old, [if] I wanted to be in an exclusive relationship with Mr. Beales, my teacher?” she asked.
The woman said she did not remember “feeling any specific feelings” about Beales’ and Gillesse’s relationship.
The woman said she regularly met at Beales’ home in the evening for sex while Gillesse was teaching adult ballet classes at Maple Leaf.
Watt suggested that it was not possible for Beales and the dancer to have met up for sex from December 2019 to February 2020, as Beales was “very sick” with lung issues and was not involved with the ballet school at the time.
Watt said the dancer’s recollection of events shouldn’t be considered reliable, as her allegation of oral sex on the morning of Dec. 16, 2019, “comes out of nowhere” after Beales congratulated her on a recent performance.
“It’s just [that] she shows up, and suddenly, she remembers providing oral sex,” he said.
Watt said messages between Beales and the dancer are consistent with Beales’ testimony — that the dancer was enamoured with him and wanted to talk to Beales about it.
The woman told the court that she and Beales had pet names for each other, that they talked about marriage and that she kept a list of baby names for the kids that she wanted to have with him. She testified that Beales got her pregnant and she miscarried at the age of 16.
Watt said that it cannot be assumed that Beales was in a position of trust or authority just because he had been her teacher.
The dancer “clearly” idolized Beales because of his knowledge and experience in dance, but Beales was not in a position of control where he could demand obedience or instill consequences as a dance teacher, he said.
Beales stopped teaching the dancer in June 2019, and the dancer was teaching in addition to dancing at the ballet school until the school was shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Watt said.
Watt said the relationship between Beales and the dancer ended in November 2020.
The allegation that Beales continued to have sex with the dancer after November 2020 is “simply unbelievable,” as Beales was not in Victoria for much of the time, and when he was in the city, he was accompanied by his mother and had custody of his three children, Watt said.
The woman, however, said she and Beales would meet up in his home and have sex in his bedroom on the weekends he was in town before his children were dropped off.
By the time Beales got back together with the dancer in mid-2021, the dancer — now 17 — was about to drop out of high school and move away from Victoria to enroll in dance school and work part-time while living independently, Watt said.
“There isn’t a position of trust that exists in that time frame,” he said.
Messages between the two during that time clearly show that they are in a long-distance relationship, he said.
Crown prosecutor Rebecca Watmough said Beales’ testimony should be rejected, as he contradicted himself “countless times” during direct evidence and cross-examination.
“He offered non-responsive answers, provided evidence that was inconsistent with human experience and common sense, and evidence that is entirely inconsistent with the Signal [app] messages that he has agreed he sent,” she said.
In her closing remarks, Watmough spent about half an hour listing what she said were contradictions and changes in Beales’ testimony under cross-examination.
Beales’ recollection that a supposed conversation he had with the dancer on Dec. 16, 2019 — which included him giving feedback on a recent performance and the dancer discussing her feelings for him — only lasted five or 10 minutes doesn’t line up with common sense, Watmough said.
Watmough said that when Beales — who maintains that he only ever had sex with the dancer in his bedroom and his living room — was asked about messages between him and the dancer describing “playtime, or sexual intercourse, in hidden places,” Beales said that all happened inside his house.
Under cross-examination, Beales agreed that he wasn’t sure about when he started a sexual relationship with the dancer, Watmough said.
Watmough said the court should consider the conversation between Beales and the dancer when she confronted him about their relationship over Signal in March 2023.
“You f—-ed me when I was 15!!!” the woman wrote.
“Essentially, you had sexual intercourse with me when I was 15. You had let me fall for you when I was 14, when I was suicidal and so broken …
“You know, I used to not want to think about our relationship because I was embarrassed that I let that happen to myself. But I’m not embarrassed anymore. I’m f—-ing angry and that anger feels like such a relief,” the woman wrote.
Beales’ responses — “I’m sorry I believed you when you said that age didn’t matter,” and “I’m sorry. I thought I was all you wanted” — should be taken as admissions of guilt, Watmough said.