Bolshoi Ballet Academy (Moscow State Academy of Choreography), Moscow, Russia, 2010
Russia RU
In the summer of 1998, Schneider traveled to Moscow, Russia where he told two ballet instructors at the Moscow State Academy of Choreography that he was willing to provide “assistance” to students attending the academy. The instructors identified a 12-year old student whose family could no longer afford to pay his board. Schneider convinced the boy’s parents to allow him to live with Schneider in an apartment a few blocks from the school. From the fall of 1998 until 2004, Schneider engaged in a sexual relationship with the victim, bringing him to Philadelphia for a summer program in 2001, then returning to Moscow with the victim in August 2001 to continue the sexual relationship. Schneider paid for private ballet lessons at the apartment, and provided the victim with food and clothing. But he told the youngster to keep their relationship a secret. They had oral sex approximately three times a week and later anal sex about four times a week when he was 14 and 15 years old. The victim was exploited sexually (as a domestic sex servant), with the provision of room and board as a means of coercion.