Abby Lee Miller from Dance Moms sentenced to a year in prision

[lottieandmia]

How long has this gone on?

www.google.co.uk/amp/amp.usatoday.com/story/101468018/

It's a good thing she never had children!

There were certain times within the show that made sense a year or 2 after they happened!

E.g. Abby insistence she managed the children. We knew she needed money after the fraud case came out.

As the company director AL was looking at the business side of things but I do think she had a soft spot for the girls. She had an unhealthy obsession about them making broadway it seemed. She also had quite a negative attitude towards the education system.

Plenty of things were clearly set up - including Candy Apples rivalry and I hope the other incidents with other dance schools were made for TV situations too because of that really happens at dance competitions it's disgusting!

I danced at competitions for years and although some mums were bragging about their kids and commented on others, and some thought nothing if taking it a second mortgage for a costume - most were normal parents.
And a few of the dancers I trained with have had amazing careers in dance. One is a well known choreographer. One owns a dance school.
The rest of us are teachers, lawyers, admin, sahm and various other roles in life.

I learnt a lot through my years of dance training - and not all of it was dance step related!

Most are/were normal at comps, thankfully. However, I've seen crying parents, argumentative parents and a lot of nonsense going on behind the scenes at comps. There are even some dance schools and dance school owners who do not speak to each other (I was told as a new member which dance schools one current school avoided).
That's before you get to internal conflict within the dance schools. Accusations of favouritism, children not being given difficult enough dances and set up to fail. A bit of tweaking and you have a Dance Mums scenario
I think AL's school was chosen partly because her school did particularly well on the show circuit.

Normal wasn't my experience of dance school - I had teachers that were nuts. Shouted at 6 year old because their costumes weren't ready, told people they were fat. One teacher I remember would tell one person to 'stand up' then pick them to pieces. We also had to watch each other and criticise much like Abby Lee would get her students to do. There was also vicious rivalry between parents.

Believe me it does go on! But tbh this was the 80s

I think Abby and Cathy were friends in the beginning but nearer the end they clearly weren't.

It still goes on I'm afraid. I'm mostly talking about the last year and comps. There are some sane and lovely schools, and I think we're with a safe -ish school now, though nowhere is perfect I've found.

One parent left one of our old schools as their six year old had the dance teacher threatening her in private lessons about not trying hard enough in her solos. Apparently she'd been hissing at her (parents waited outside the door in these private lessons) that she wouldn't be able to stay in the school if she didn't try harder, or would have her new solo taken away, that sort of thing. The child didn't speak out for ages.

Cathy used to work for Abby and her daughter danced with her in the first series.

That's awful Lyrical.

I think Abby will do very well out of this, ok she's got a shit year ahead but its only one year out of the rest of her life. Abby is TV gold, I can see book deals, documentaries, even a film. Somehow I can't see her keeping her head down and having a quiet life in prison, the girls are either going to love her fingers crossed, or hate her eek!

I danced in 80's/90's too.

There were a few parents of the usual winners who could be a bit Melissa about their child not winning but in general they were ok (compared to the Dannie moms lot!).

Our dance teachers had a few 'moments' but nothing out of the ordinary for the way teachers were at that time anyway! They could get away with being a little more blunt. Luckily for me one was only personal once. She was a teacher employed by studio owners. She called me fat. Well actually told me to pull my stomach in as it was sticking out further these days.

My mum made her cry in response and she never didn't again!
Fwiw I was 15yo and 4.5st so actually very underweight. I had chronic health condition with my stomach so it was distended due to that.
I was in no way fat - in fact I was severely underweight!

Pulling in stomach is what everyone is told to do in ballet class here, even the slimmest of people. So before you even start an exercise it's 'stomach in, bottom in, shoulders down, chin up, elbows back, knees pulled up etc' then you may begin

Calling fat is always very very wrong, especially in someone who is underweight.

It wasn't being told to pull it in.

It was being screamed at as I turned across the room to "pull that stomach of yours in - it's hanging out more and more lately. I think you should tell your mum to stop letting you eat cake"

Even 20 years on I can remember it word for word

I always found Vivi interesting. I know Cathy adopted her but the ways she forced her to dance at the beginning was cringeworthy.

Kendall's new song was on the screens at the gym recently. I couldn't hear it but it definitely featured Nia and Kalani.

Ffs I can't believe someone is trying to enable abuse from dance teachers. It's rude to say that someone's perception of how they were treated was wrong.

Cathy was funny 'I'm not traveling on a bus like an Elementary student!'

She's a vile piece of work, any teacher who says such terrible things to their pupils is. I can't believe people are minimising such abuse. She hid money from creditors in order to keep it for herself. A lot of it! That's theft, people, on a grand scale - how would you feel if it were your business, your livelihood that you use to feed your kids and pay your rent, that was robbed and you suffered financially so she could carry on spending on frivolities? Because that's exactly what she did, took services and goods from people and didn't pay for it when she had the money to do so. She got off lightly.

Yes, some of the things she said to many children were appalling. The tears from them weren't staged, that's for sure (I know nobody said this!) I remember another girl, at one of her auditions, she dismissed as roadkill or something like that Unnecessary

Cannot believe how many are dismissing her theft, too. Those creditors are real people with businesses to run to earn their living and she stole from them. She paid a fine and some cash, that she was trying to hide, was recovered, but hopefully the government will also strip her of assets to pay those people back but probably not because she went through bankrupcy.

Her going to prison is not as an example because she's an 'international face' . It is because she committed a federal crime and many federal crimes come with automatic sentences.

Maybe now she'll come to realise just what exactly the effect of her crime is on real people. I've had friends who have lost their businesses and jobs due to people who think they're too good to pay their bills.

I agree expat - you're absolutely right. Imagine the vitriol if she'd stolen that amount of money in benefits? I'm always rather incredulous about the hypocrisy on MN wrt stealing money from the government.

She actually stole from her creditors, lottie. She went bankrupt but hid over $700k to avoid paying the people whose goods and services she used. She stole and when that happens, real people can lose their livelihoods and companies pass on their losses to all customers, including you and me, because one person thinks they're too good to pay up. She also tried to smuggle money into another country to hide it. It's theft same as shoplifting.

But yes, imagine if she'd scammed benefits, the ire there would be on here.

Those businesses will probably never get the money for what they provided for her.

Oh, I understand. I thought she had hidden money earned from being taxed. However, this is just as bad as you rightly say. Unfortunately she is now blaming her advisors. I don't believe she didn't know what she was doing.

Ok it was me that made the comment but I realise from further posts that I didn't understand the situation fully.
So probably should t have commented
I thought it was that she filed for bankruptcy but had money hidden.
I did t realise she hadn't paid for goods and services.

What I'd like to know is where the money for travel to competitions and hotel stays and costumes came from. It would appear that the parents paid huge fees for their child to be taught at ALDC - I know there were high earning families but those competitions would have cost hundreds per week?

Perhaps they were paid for by Lifetime?

Parents paid for a lot of that. There are some episodes where it's mentioned. They talk about costumes coming from the shop etc