Lusiana Lukman: Breaking Forty Years of Silence on Abuse at the Royal Conservatory of Music

Lusiana Lukman is the Executive Founding Director of the Classical Music Conservatory in Toronto. She has been teaching piano in Canada since 1991 and founded her school on Roncesvalles in 1997.In February 2026, Lusiana went public in the Toronto Star with her account of being sexually abused by Boris Berlin, a legendary piano instructor at the Royal Conservatory of Music, during lessons when she was fifteen years old. Berlin taught at the RCM for over seventy years, wrote the beginner piano books still used in classrooms today, and received the Order of Canada. He died in 2001.In this episode, Lusiana talks about reporting the abuse at seventeen, the forty years of silence that followed, what finally moved her to speak publicly, the school she built as a direct response to what happened to her, and what she needs people who are moved by her story to do.Trigger warning: this episode contains frank discussion of child sexual abuse and institutional cover-up.Sign Lusiana's petition demanding an independent third party investigation into sexual abuse at the Royal Conservatory of Music: change.org/p/demand-the-rcm-toronto-conduct-an-independent-investigation-into-sexual-abuseLearn more about Dear Lara, Lara St. John's documentary on sexual abuse in elite music conservatories worldwide: dearlara.film/scheduleThe Classical Music Conservatory, Toronto: cmccanada.comContact Lusiana directly: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices