Girl details alleged sex assaults

A teenager testifies her teacher tried to hypnotize her

An Aiea dance instructor accused of molesting five students at the studio where he worked went beyond just touching, according to one of the victims.

Daniel Jones performed oral sex on her and made her do the same to him after she let him believe that he had hypnotized her, the 14-year-old girl testified yesterday in Circuit Judge Virginia Crandall's courtroom.

"It was weird," the girl said of the incidents, which happened several times in 2004 and 2005 at the Rosalie Woodson Dance Academy in a downstairs studio, in the main office and in the toddler room. "I didn't like it."

Jones, 21, is charged with sexually molesting or assaulting the students sometime between July 2004 and March 2005. The girls had known him for most of their lives and grew up at the dance studio, where he was well-liked and regarded as a brother.

The girl testifying yesterday said the assaults occurred mostly on Thursdays after she helped Jones teach his hip-hop class and after the students left. She and Jones would be alone in the office and he would begin by attempting to hypnotize her, before moving to tickling, massaging then to digital penetration, she said.

One of the incidents occurred on director Woodson's desk and another time at the desk where Jones' mother, who also worked at the academy, sat. She recalled one of the incidents happened on Valentine's Day 2005 because Jones had asked if she had a Valentine at school and she told him no.

The touching began, she said, at a raku camping trip at Kualoa Park in August 2004 where she shared a tent with Jones because the tent she had shared with her parents had leaked the night before.

The girl said the two were talking in the tent for a while when he asked her several times if she knew how to touch herself. When he persisted, she said she finally said, "I guess," before he proceeded to assault her.

Defense attorney Myron Takemoto grilled the girl about her feelings toward Jones and her attitude toward other girls when they were around him. She admitted that she liked Jones, but not as a boyfriend. She acknowledged that he at one time told her she was too young for him, but denied pursuing him.

She testified that Jones, before assaulting her, zipped the windows to the tent closed, saying, "If anyone saw this, he would get arrested."