Boston ballerina Dusty Button breaks her silence to deny sex assault allegations

She is the prima ballerina turned pariah accused of grooming and sexually abusing a string of young proteges in the dance world’s answer to #MeToo.

But Dusty Button, one-time poster girl of the Boston Ballet and social media sensation, has broken her year-long silence to blast her accusers as fame-hungry liars – telling DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview: ‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

Seven women have come forward since July 2021 to level detailed allegations of assault, sex trafficking and even child rape at Button, 33, and her husband Mitchell Button, 37.

The bombshell complaint depicts star-struck young performers seduced by promises of fame and career advancement only to find their lives and finances controlled by the ‘seasoned predators’.

Sage Humphries, a 24-year-old dancer for the Boston Ballet and the most prominent accuser, claims she was coerced into becoming a virtual sex slave for the pair whose kinky appetites included wrapping her in spandex and violating her with sex toys.

Another woman, a minor at the time, alleges she was drugged and raped at gunpoint in a room filled with guns. An ex-girlfriend recalls Mitchell, a former dance instructor, placing a knife to her throat and threatening a man with an AK-47.

Their complaint – spanning 71 pages in a complaint filed last December in Nevada – are as harrowing as they are unthinkable in the demure, bunned-up world of ballet.

They are also completely false, Dusty and Mitchell tell DailyMail.com in an explosive riposte in which they compare the $133 million lawsuit to Johnny Depp’s years-long battle to clear his name – and label Humphries ‘ballet’s own Amber Heard.’

‘The first time any of this was mentioned I was in the middle of teaching 250 children. With the language they used, they wanted people to believe that I raped children,’ says Dusty.

‘It’s disgusting, the allegations make zero sense. All I’ve ever done is try to protect kids in this industry. I know 100 percent that we’ve never done anything wrong.’

Mitchell, Dusty’s husband of seven years and one-time manager, says their lives have ‘flatlined’ with sponsors, friends and business partners shunning them after the story broke last summer.

‘The headlines were like a dagger to the back,’ he says. ‘Minor raped at gunpoint by a famous ballerina and her husband. Every media outlet in the world would pick that up, why wouldn’t they?

‘Look at Amber Heard. She was recorded and proven in court to have abused Johnny Depp multiple times while he didn’t reciprocate. But somehow she’s a victim still and everyone will band behind her because she’s a female.

‘And that’s kind of where we’re at now. It’s just about trying to survive. Both of us would have taken our own lives months into this if we weren’t together. It feels like you’re drowning and someone’s got their boot on your face.’

With 300,000 Instagram followers and a brand ambassador role with Red Bull – the first ever for a ballerina-athlete – Dusty was among the most idolized dancers on the planet until last summer.

Her path to greatness was atypical in the regimented ballet world. While her rivals had trained from a young age and attended prestigious, pricey schools, Dusty didn’t start classes until she was 10 or 11.

When she earned a scholarship to the storied Royal Ballet School in London, her family, friends and church congregation in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina raised funds for her to go.

In 2012 Dusty won a spot at the renowned Boston Ballet despite auditioning in basketball shoes and sweatpants. Within two years she was principal ballerina with a huge following on Instagram, showcasing dazzling routines to hip hop music.

‘It ruffled a few feathers, that’s for sure. I think that explains a lot of this,’ she reflects.

The first two accusers, Sage Humphries and Gina Menichino, 26, filed suit against Mitchell, who helped manage his wife’s social media as well as his own successful business making custom built trucks and Ferraris.

Mitchell had levied his ‘power and influence in the dance world to sexually abuse young dancers across the country’, according to the civil action, which named Dusty a ‘non-party co-conspirator.’

Menichino claimed Mitchell targeted her when she attended his dance classes in Tampa, Florida, as a 13-year-old girl, befriending her before sending her sexually explicit texts and videos.

The then-25-year-old instructor joined students for sleepovers and sexually abused Menichino under a blanket in one of two alleged attacks in 2010, according to the suit filed in Nevada, where the Buttons now live in a gated community close to the Las Vegas strip.

Humphries claimed she had come under the couple’s spell after she joined Boston Ballet as an apprentice in 2016. Mitchell and Dusty, who worked there until May 2017, allegedly promised to mentor the then 19-year-old and make her a social media star.

According to her filing, Humphries handed control of her apps, texts and emails to Mitchell and began sleeping in the Buttons’ apartment and styling her clothes and hair to match Dusty.

The Orange County, California, native claims she was ordered to cut off her family as the friendship descended into emotional manipulation and sexual abuse.

On one occasion she alleges she was forced to wear a spandex suit covering her entire body, including her eyes and mouth, and was led to a room with an ‘arsenal of guns hanging on the walls’ where she was tied up and molested.

If Humphries tried to break away or disobey the Buttons ‘they would threaten to revoke their financial support and sabotage her career.’

After her parents intervened and forced her to return to California, Humphries obtained an abuse prevention order against Dusty and Mitchell in August 2017.

The Buttons claim they didn’t fight the Boston court’s decision despite having what they describe as a 1,200 page binder of texts, love notes and songs demonstrating the abuse was fabricated.

They admit they were in a three-way tryst – a throuple – with Humphries but deny doing anything wrong.

‘You can see from the texts on all three ends that it was a loving, caring relationship. And yes, it’s weird. We agree it’s weird. We slipped up in that one moment in our lives and it’s the biggest mistake we ever made,’ says Mitchell.

‘We never appealed the order because we never wanted to see her face again or anyone related to her. There we were thinking it was done but apparently she ran out of money and here she is wanting more from us.’

If those allegations weren’t damaging enough, by December 2021 five more plaintiffs had been added to the complaint filed by prominent attorney Sigrid McCawley, who represents victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Dusty was named a co-defendant and the couple were accused of everything from false imprisonment and sex trafficking to assault and battery, with each plaintiff demanding $15.5 million for emotional and physical injuries.

Three more students had come forward with lurid accounts of Mitchell’s tenure at the Centerstage Dance Academy, including Danielle Gutierrez, who said she began a relationship with Mitchell at age 17.

When she tried to flee his apartment he ‘pulled out a knife and put it to Danielle’s throat,’ the suit alleges. ‘On another occasion, Taylor pulled an AK-47 on another man in front of Danielle’.

Jane Doe 100, an anonymous accuser, claimed Dusty befriended and gushed about her ‘enormous potential’ when her dance company rented studio space from the Boston Ballet in 2014.

A minor at the time, she describes a brutal sexual attack that took place on a mattress in a room ‘with an arsenal of guns hanging on the wall’.

Dusty held the youngster down and took videos and pictures while Mitchell raped her, according to the complaint. ‘At one point, Dusty had a gun in her hand,’ it states.

If the twisted scenes and guns described by Humphries and Jane Doe 100 are eerily similar, that’s because the accusers are parroting one another’s false claims, the Buttons say. And any guns they supposedly possessed were just toys and props they used for photoshoots.

‘The dance world is extremely small so a lot of studios and dancers know one another,’ says Dusty.

‘It’s gone from Sage to the people that have jumped on the bandwagon. One of these people is his ex-girlfriend, I think three or four of these people are from his old studio. It seems like it’s a lot of #metoo, a lot of vendettas – a lot of we’re going to get money, we’re not famous enough.’

Mitchell points to a recent interview Humphries gave to Boston Magazine revealing she reached out to Florida-based McCawley in the summer of 2020 after watching a docuseries on Epstein’s crimes.

‘It just so happens to be the same lawyer mentioned in the documentary. They have tried to make Dusty out to be Ghislaine Maxwell. It’s crazy,’ he says.

Pressed as to why so many women from his past have come forward, Mitchell responds: ‘$130 million dollars seems like a pretty good motivation. If you spent a year in the dance community, you would see it’s a strange cult-like mentality.’

After failing to get the case dismissed under the statute of limitations the Buttons filed a counterclaim for defamation in July which was every bit as incendiary, the couple’s attorney Marc Randazza describing the accusations as ‘outlandish … akin to a satanic panic.’

The plaintiffs conspired to ‘extort money from the Buttons and to advance their careers by attaching their name to the #MeToo circuit,’ thundered Randazza.

Gutierrez was a ‘woman scorned’ who had physically lashed out at Mitchell when he left her for Dusty. Jane Doe 100, the couple insist, is someone ‘they have never seen, spoken to, taught, or met’.

As for Humphries, they claim the true culprits are her ‘hyper controlling and conservative’ parents Micah and Michael Humphries who resented their daughter being involved in a ‘throuple’ and pressed her to pursue false legal claims.

The Buttons’ counterclaim also lists a number of influential, older men whom they claim paid Humphries for ‘sexual favors’ – most notably Daryl Katz, the 61-year-old billionaire owner of the Edmonton Oilers NHL team.

It alleges that Micah Humphries knew her daughter was ‘literally a prostitute to a billionaire’ but encouraged it.

‘If Sage is truly the damaged flower she claims to be, the price should be paid – but it should be paid by those who actually engaged in illegal acts with her,’ the filing states.

Randazza later filed an amended complaint striking the suggestion Humphries was underage when Katz allegedly paid her $75,000, blaming a mix-up over her date of birth.

Katz has denied any wrongdoing and says his dealings with Humphries were ‘business related’. His name remains in the suit but he’s no longer a third-party defendant.

According to a report in Variety, he’s hired Anthony Pelicano, a former private investigator turned ‘crisis management’ specialist, to try to have the allegations dismissed with prejudice so they can’t be revived.

The intervention of Pelicano, who spent 16 years in federal prison for wiretapping, racketeering, fraud and conspiracy pours yet more fuel on the powder keg case that, as it stands, is headed towards jury trial at the US District Court for Nevada.

Lawyers for the seven accusers did not respond to requests for comment.

But in a July 29 response to their counterclaim, McCawley wrote: ‘[Mitchell] Taylor Button and Dusty Button are seasoned predators, manipulators, and criminals.

‘Together, they carried out a years-long scheme to exploit their positions of power and prestige in the dance world to sexually abuse young dancers across the country. Accordingly, seven of those dancers initiated this lawsuit to obtain justice for the abuse and trauma inflicted on them.

‘In response, Taylor and Dusty went on the offensive and filed counterclaims against Plaintiffs, calling the underage victims jealous liars, shaming them for past relationships, and dragging five non-parties into this lawsuit with no legal basis to do so, including one victim’s parents for merely trying to protect their daughter from their cycle of abuse.

‘Their filing is a clear attempt to intimidate and silence their victims. It won’t work.’

While the ballet world holds its breath for further bombshells the Buttons are not backing down.

‘We’re drowning in debt to this lawsuit. But what can you take from us that we haven’t already lost,’ says Mitchell.

‘We would have gone to a jury the day after this lawsuit was served because that’s exactly what we want. We want the chance to show people the truth.’

Dusty is unemployed and adamant she’ll never dance again, at least professionally. Her sole focus for now is poring over the thousands of texts, photos and documents she says will disprove her accusers.

‘I love dancing and I think that I’m good at it, but this has made me realize that I only love the art of dancing and I despise the industry. I’ve never done a single thing to deserve what they’ve done to me.

‘The fact that we’re at our lowest point and we’re still fighting, this should show that we’re telling the truth. If that doesn’t show people that we believe in ourselves and we believe in the truth, I don’t know what else will.’