Safeguarding and the Avoidance of Deskilling: Position Statement for Debate on ‘Music in the Curriculum: tensions, choices and opportunities’, City, University of London, 15 November 2019

Posted: November 15, 2019 | Author: Ian Pace | Filed under: Abuse, Chetham's, Culture, Higher Education, Music - General, Musical Education, Musicology, Specialist Music Schools, Yehudi Menuhin School | Tags: arnold whittall, Barbara Kelly, Charlotte Gardiner, chetham's, christopher wiley, critical thinking, David Hughes, David Ross Education Trust, Deborah Mawer, ethnography, ethnomusicology, Eton Choral Courses, franklin cox, gillian moore, henry stobart, Jessica Pitt, kay kaufman shelemay, martin roscoe, musicology, Nicola Benedetti, peter tregear, popular music studies, realism, royal holloway, royal musical association, Simon Frith, Simon Toyne, SOAS, Southbank Centre, Steven Berryman, terry eagleton, william cheng | 2 Comments

A significantly abridged version of this statement will be delivered at the public debate on ‘Music in the Curriculum: tensions, choices and opportunities’, City, University of London, 15 November 2019. This is chaired by Steven Berryman, Director of Music, City of London School for Girls; Cultural and Creative Learning, City of London Education Team, with a panel consisting of Dr David Hughes, Research Associate at SOAS and expert on Japan and Japanese musical culture, Professor Barbara Kelly, from the Royal Northern College of Music, also President of the Royal Musical Association, Professor Barbara Mawer from the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Gillian Moore CBE, Director of Music and former Head of Education, Southbank Centre, Dr Jessica Pitt, Lecturer in Music Education at the Royal College of Music, Dr Henry Stobart, Reader in Music and Ethnomusicology, Royal Holloway, University of London, and Simon Toyne, Executive Director of Music at the David Ross Education Trust and Director of the Eton Choral Courses.

Statement

I wish to speak about two distinct issues facing music education, both of them relating to my own research and areas of expertise. The first is safeguarding, the welfare of pupils undergoing instrumental and vocal tuition. This comes out of my work as a researcher, lobbyist and campaigner on abuse in music education, following the revelations in this respect that have become public since the trial and conviction of Michael Brewer, former Director of Music at Chetham’s School of Music, and his former wife Kay. All of this led to spate of reporting on widespread sexual, physical and emotional abuse within specialist music education, leading to hearings on the subject in October at the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, for which I gave evidence as an academic expert. A link to videos, transcripts and other documents from these hearings can be found here.

The second issue is the ‘deskilling’ of musical education, and draws upon a range of writings and public statements which began with an article I wrote in 2015 for the 80^th birthday of musicologist Arnold Whittall (Ian Pace, ‘To do justice to Arnold’s enviable legacy, we should reverse a tendency towards the de-skilling of a discipline’, Society for Music Analysis Newsletter 2015, pp. 28-9), and was recently the subject of a roundtable at the Royal Musical Association Conference 2019.

Safeguarding

A range of what I believe are my most important earlier writings on abuse and safeguarding in musical education are the following:

‘Reported Cases in Musical Education, 1990-2012, and Issues for a Public Inquiry’ (2013)
‘The Trial of Michael and Kay Brewer and the Death of Frances Andrade, and the Aftermath, 2013’ (2014)
‘The culture of music education lends itself to abuse’, Times Educational Supplement, 8 May 2013
‘Safeguarding’, Music Teacher (April 2015), pp. 13-15
‘Marcel Gazelle and the Culture of the Early Yehudi Menuhin School’ (2013)

I have recently collated a series of forty-five testimonies from former Chetham’s pupils who generally studied there between the 1960s and 1990s. These paint a bleak picture of a school characterised by physical, emotional and sexual abuse on a regular basis, as part of a wider culture of bullying (including from teachers), isolation, grooming, routine humiliation, cynical exploitation of competition, institutionalised misogyny, self-harm and eating disorders.

I would add that the range of testimonies I have heard relating to other specialist music schools over the course of their history are of a similar nature, and would not want to suggest that this has been exclusive just to one school. Nor that conditions from the 1960s to 1990s are the same as today, though we should be cautious in assuming that everything has changed.

There is much to say about measures to ensure these sorts of environments can never arise again, and indeed about how schools which build their reputation upon the success of some their historic students need to accept responsibility and make amends for the immense suffering, often with long-term implications, experienced by some of the others who studied at them. But what I want to pinpoint now is the relationship between the student and their 1-1 instrumental or vocal teacher. The pianist Martin Roscoe said to me that his own teacher, Gordon Green (about whom a PhD student of mine is currently writing a thesis) thought that the best teacher is the one who makes themselves dispensable. I wholeheartedly agree, but have seen the opposite far too often: teachers who try to dominate and take over the lives of their students. We must above all recognise boundaries here, and ensure clear guidelines to instruct teachers for good practice in helping young musicians to develop and flourish without trying to mould their whole person. I absolutely believe in the importance of vigorous and intensive musical training, especially for those seeking professional careers as musicians, but refuse to accept that this requires any type of demeaning behaviour or language on the part of the teacher, which can often crush a student’s wider confidence. At the heart of safeguarding should be a recognition for the dignity and independence of a student as a person, and a nurturing culture which does not isolate them from the world. I have seen all too well what the alternative entails.

Deskilling

Beyond the 2015 article in which I was one of the first to apply the term ‘deskilling’ to musical education, reports from the roundtable I chaired at the RMA 2019 conference can be found here and here. I have also, with Australian musicologist Peter Tregear, been co-editing a book together entitled Rethinking Contemporary Musicology: Perspectives on Interdisciplinarity, Skills and Deskilling. Many of the contributors are concerned about a progressive reduction, in the teaching of and research into music at some Anglo-American universities, of many core skills – notation, musicianship, theory and analysis, knowledge of historical context and so on.

Many students can gain degrees in music with only limited development of these skills, if at all. Some then go on to teach in schools and are unable to transmit such skills to their own students. Corresponding, some academics whose own sub-disciplines least require these skills to any great degree can become the most enthusiastic advocates of dumbing-down and deskilling.

Skills are not and should not be set in stone, and different skills are more appropriate for different types of music. But in order to accommodate the possibility of developing some skills to a high level, I do think we should at least question an assumption that an increase in ‘diversity’ in the curriculum is an unquestioned positive in all respects. Without extra teaching time available to accommodate this, superficial breadth often takes the place of depth. Attempts at books on ‘global musics’ and the like, such as Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s Soundscapes (New York: Norton, 2001) inevitably find it hard to avoid presenting a touristic view, which hardly breeds more concrete engagement either with music or its context, and can reduce a lot of music primarily to varieties of exotica.

The skills involved to engage with a Schubert song in terms of its relationship to early nineteenth-century Germanic melodic and harmonic conventions, those of text setting, poetic conventions, early romantic aesthetics, wider German philosophy are of a different order of depth. Scholars who can engage meaningfully with all of these factors (and would have a wider contextual framework owing to knowledge of the composer’s output and much other music of the period) are increasingly out of demand in all but the most elite institutions. In every sense the skills required to engage with various Indian, Chinese, Arabic or other musical traditions, or with the work of Miles Davis or many other musicians in various genres, are just as extensive and require just as wide a range of wider contextual knowledge.

I believe some other valuable teaching skills have been undermined by wider forms of corrosion in academia, various of which will be addressed in the book Peter and I are co-editing. Some of these stem from the marketisation of academic and the need to attract and retain as many students as possible, regardless of prior aptitude or achievement, leading to the growth of ‘soft’ subjects. While there is a good deal of ethnomusicology involving exhaustive inquiry into unfamiliar musical cultures through immersion and application of sophisticated theoretical models, some other work involving ethnographic approaches can consist of little more than rather slavish reiterations of the views of the subjects interviewed, with minimal wider contextual knowledge (this is explored in some detail in my ‘Ethnographic Approaches to the Study of Western Art Music: Questions of Context, Realism, Evidence, Description and Analysis’ and ‘When Ethnography becomes Hagiography: Uncritical Musical Perspectives’, in Researching and Writing on Contemporary Creative Art and Artists in Theory and Practice, edited Christopher Wiley and Ian Pace (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020)). Some of those who supplied statements in response to a 2016 debate on ethnomusicology have described an unhappy situation of an evangelical and censorious set of attitudes from some ethnomusicologists to most others, and a ‘rather flat, uncritical reporting of what the people of country X say about their music(al practices)’.

The field of popular music studies in the UK has many deep roots in sociology and cultural studies, not necessarily requiring musical expertise. The popular music academic Simon Frith once wrote disparagingly of listening and close engagement with music in favour of focus-group style investigations into what people think of it, an enthusiastic endorsement of what I have elsewhere called ‘musicology without ears’. But I do not believe a degree in Music should be essentially one in Market Research. A good deal of popular, film and video game music studies reflect the populist biases of many of their academic practitioners, and a wider wish to keep such study accessible to those with no specialist musical knowledge. There are of course many exceptions, for example in rigorous analytical work on popular music, but I have not seen evidence of these yet playing any central role within their sub-disciplines.

The peer-review system faces serious challenges in the face of an atomisation of sub-disciplines, so that many articles, chapters and books gain acceptance from reviewers and editors with a particular sub-disciplinary knowledge but not necessarily expertise in the subject of inquiry or wider methods which have been applied to it. Sweeping pronouncements on historical performance, on new music, on nineteenth-century aesthetics, to give a few areas about which I have some expertise, are not always subject to the right sort of scrutiny. As a consequence, all sorts of factual errors, half-truths or untruths, falsifiable or unsubstantiated claims, material lacking rigorous use of data or reasoning, or which cherry-picks data to support a priori assumptions, appear in print in respected journals or books by major publishers, and much of this type of material is reiterated by students and other academics, in the process becoming ideology. At worst, demonstrably unreliable or unresearched work is treated uncritically or even defensively by others with tribal loyalties to particular ideological approaches, especially when their advocates have institutional power.

I believe this is the result of a decline of critical thinking in academia, in favour of narrow political advocacy or simple group think. Has this not has always been the case to some extent? Perhaps, but I do believe a sufficiently vigorous intellectual culture has previously served to reveal and discredit clearly false and uninformed claims. But this process has itself been under some attack for a number of years, most prominently by the advocates of William Cheng’s book Just Vibrations (Ann Arbor: MI: University of Michigan Press), subject to a sustained critique by Peter Tregear in the pages of Musicology Australia and also in the RMA panel. Cheng dismisses the value of fact-checking, scrutiny of reasoning, and so on, in academic writing, as part of a ‘paranoid’ approach; he prefers to judge work by the extent to which he would claim it does social justice. What this amounts to is a simple surrender of scholarship to a narrow political agenda.

I am disappointed that our discipline has sunk so low that arguments like those of Cheng are taken seriously, but believe this is symptomatic of a wider Anglophone culture and politics in which music and other art forms are little valued. In Britain and America, which adopted industrialisation more fundamentally than their counterparts elsewhere, with associated utilitarian values, music and other arts have often been valued primarily to the extent they serve as pointers to other phenomena, or can be associated with a clear social function. The former constitutes a variety of artistic realism which ultimately denies the art. As the Marxist critic Terry Eagleton once wrote, ‘A poet who managed to make his or her words ‘become’ the fruit they describe would be a greengrocer’. Art does not simply provide a window onto reality, but adds to that reality.

The violinist Nicola Benedetti, however, has recently spoken about how:

It [Music] is the art of all the things we can’t see or touch. It is feelings and thoughts, offerings of generosity, vulnerability and openness. It addresses us, communicates and passes invisible things from people creating sound to people receiving sound. It has the power to capture us, to make us feel many complex things. It can lift us high into optimism and accompany us during feelings of hurt and pain. The making of music can be described as healing, invigorating, exhausting and all-consuming. It brings millions together through the basic act of listening and thousands together through the act of making melody, rhythm and harmony in the practice and service of collective expression.

[During Benedetti’s work with schools and music organisations]: ‘I saw a huge number of inspiring teachers engaging their students with no sacrifice on quality, […]

I saw great teaching and playing, regardless of level. The more I looked, the more excellence, ingenuity, creativity, dedication, resilience and unbelievable steadfastness in both teacher and student I encountered. […]

But I also saw lacklustre music teachers and students, worn down by years of zero celebration of their work, continuous battles to hold onto the tiny resources they have, and feeling like they are pushing against a culture that only celebrates music sold like addictive candy.

(Nicola Benedetti, ‘Music teaching is vital to a child’s education’ (2019); another section from the talk is found in ‘Music is the art of all the things we can’t see or touch. We need it in our lives’, The Guardian, 8 November 2019).

Benedetti’s ‘music sold like addictive candy’ is symptomatic of a wider educational culture which distrusts aesthetic judgement and as such is wary to try and develop wider taste among young people beyond what provides a form of instant gratification.

Two other quotes encapsulate issues at stake. The critic Charlotte Gardiner has written about the problems of de-professionalisation of music criticism and concomitant decline of technical engagement with music:

Every day as a professional critic I’m talking with artists, attending concerts, listening analytically to recordings, writing concert program notes, and getting on planes to hear what’s interesting beyond my native shores, and the sheer weight of context that brings to every review can’t be equalled by someone with a non-musical day job.

Furthermore, technical knowledge is a vital ingredient towards painting the picture for a reader who wasn’t there. For instance, if you’re reading about the premiere of a cello piece drawing on Arabic musical traditions, what best helps you imagine it in your head: being told that it had you practically feeling the desert sand on your face and smelling the exotic spices, or that the composer used the quarter-tones and wavering notes heard across Middle-Eastern music, and mimicked the sound of the region’s traditional reed flute by getting the cellist to play airy harmonics on their lowest string? Basically, emotions and adjectives add important color, but the meat of the review will be the verbs.

Sticking with technical knowledge, when artists themselves have spent their lives training to the highest technical standards, they deserve critics who are similarly trained and who properly understand what they’re doing. I’m actually yet to meet an artist who wants to be reviewed by a non-professional. They want specifics and accuracy.

(Charlotte Gardiner, ‘Criticism Reviewed’, takt1 (11 June 2019))

Then, the cellist and composer Franklin Cox made a comment on social media which I found remarkable and earlier blogged. He was prepared to express the unfashionable view that those teaching music have a responsibility towards tradition and history, because of the poor consequences of a musical culture in which musicians and scholars have no knowledge of these, rendering students only really able to create a type of musical or scholarly ‘fast food’ (resonating with the remarks of Benedetti and to some extent Gardiner):

The depth and potential of any given present is dependent on its knowledge of the past. By default, the animal needs will define any present–food, reproduction, entertainment, war, and so forth.

It is only owing to the depth of the historical heritage of English literature that Joyce’s work reached the level it did. He was acutely conscious of the high standards of the literary tradition he was working in. There was great literature in this tradition ages ago, and the tradition has been nourished continuously. If you are immersed in this heritage, you have some notion of what is required to contribute to it; second-rate work is bound to appear shoddy. But if people surrender the effort of learning this heritage, it’s probable that second-rate work will become the norm. Unfortunately, this process is sweeping through the American educational system.

There’s a similar heritage in art music. You have access to all of the historical music you were referring to owing to the immense efforts of earlier musicians. I feel a duty to learn about, cherish, and pass this tradition on to the next generation. It’s increasingly difficult to do this as higher education is converted into a fast food education industry.

These traditions won’t be passed on automatically; by default, the cheapest and easiest solution will be found. Each generation will have to find a new way to defend these traditions.

Conclusion

Those who care about music – and about scholarship – should stand up for a proper curriculum, for rigorous teaching of core skills and methods. The current (2016) QAA Subject Benchmark Statement is very loose in its benchmark skills:

QAA1

QAA2 These need to be strengthened to incorporate more clearly core requirements – in notation, aural skills, analysis, history, aesthetics – for any degree simply calling itself ‘Music’, a designator which at present as often quite vague. We should not be trying to teach too many types of music simultaneously, and be prepared to re-embrace specialisation and depth. Also, classical music does not deserve a more hostile treatment than other genres and idioms, as I feel it does receive in some environments.

Music (or any other art form) should be taught because it matters, because musical traditions are worth preserving, disseminating and developing for new generations, not because music is just some sociological phenomenon. If teachers and academics do not appear to be personally invested in music, what are the chances that students will feel inspired to study it? To be able to engage with the myriad range of detail, meanings and context of music means far more than simply being able to parrot that X or Y group in society negotiate their identity by listening to genre A or B. We need curricula and approaches to teaching which value music and other arts for their own sake.

Peter Morrison – the child abuser protected by MI5, the Cabinet Secretary, and Margaret Thatcher – updated July 2015

Posted: July 26, 2015 | Author: Ian Pace | Filed under: Abuse, Conservative Party, Politics, Westminster | Tags: baron maude, bryn alyn, bryn estyn, child abuse, christine russell, christopher grayling, conservatives, don hale, edwina currie, elm guest house, frances mowatt, francis maude, frederic forsyth, grahame nicholls, gyles brandreth, harting, jeffrey archer, jillings report, john wakeham, jonathan aitken, leon brittan, lord armstrong, lord tebbit, macur inquiry, Malcolm Layfield, margaret thatcher, martin allen, martin roscoe, nick davies, norman tebbit, north wales abuse, operation fairbank, operation pallial, paul connew, peter morrison, robert armstrong, rod richards, simon heffer, sir antony duff, stephen norris, theresa may, vishal mehortra, william hague, william van straubenzee | 13 Comments

[With great thanks to @Snowfaked and @MySweetLandlord on Twitter for finding some extra pieces of information, especially relating to Morrison and Islay, and the picture of Thatcher, Morrison and Brittan]

In Edwina Currie’s diary entry for July 24th, 1990, she wrote the following:

One appointment in the recent reshuffle has attracted a lot of gossip and could be very dangerous: Peter Morrison has become the PM’s PPS. Now he’s what they call ‘a noted pederast’, with a liking for young boys; he admitted as much to Norman Tebbit when he became deputy chairman of the party, but added, ‘However, I’m very discreet’ – and he must be! She either knows and is taking a chance, or doesn’t; either way it is a really dumb move. Teresa Gorman told me this evening (in a taxi coming back from a drinks party at the BBC) that she inherited Morrison’s (woman) agent, who claimed to have been offered money to keep quiet about his activities. It scares me, as all the press know, and as we get closer to the election someone is going to make trouble, very close to her indeed. (Edwina Currie, Diaries 1987-1992 (London: Little, Brown, 2002), p. 195)

The agent in question was Frances Mowatt. A 192 search reveals that there is now a Frances Mowatt, aged 65+, living in Billericay in Essex, Teresa Gorman’s old constituency. She may be the same person who is a Local Authority Governor for St Peter’s Catholic Primary School in Billericay.

In 1982, a boy who would then have been around 14 (the same age as I was at the time) has given a vivid account of his experiences at the hands of Morrison (Bill Gardner, ‘Westminster paedophile ring: ‘I allowed my son to go with him. You trusted people more in those days”, Daily Telegraph, January 3rd, 2015). This boy encountered Morrison, dressed in a pin-striped suit in the village of Harting, West Sussex; Morrison told him his car had broken down, offered him money to help him start it, then invited the boy to his ‘nice big house in London for the weekend’. The boy said he couldn’t come, but gave Morrison his phone number when he asked, and then received repeated phone calls imploring him to come, eventually saying yes after refusing repeatedly. Morrison came down to Sussex with a driver, told the boy and his father he had homes in Chester and London, but not that he was an MP (he said he was a barrister). To the boy’s father’s great regret, he let him go; almost immediately on the journey, Morrison began to sexually assault the boy, who said:

He’d leave me alone for a little bit, and then he’d come at me again. . . . Before long, he had my trousers off. At one point we stopped for petrol, and I thought about running out of the car, but I realised the doors had some sort of child lock and I couldn’t get out. I was so frightened.

Matters got worse: Morrison gave beer and wine to the boy and then took him to a house, which the boy (now a man in his mid-40s) thinks was Elm Guest House. There were seven or eight men around the house, and Morrison took him upstairs, stripped him, and raped him for at least an hour; the man says ‘It was the most horrendous experience of my life.’ Morrison then told him they would be going to the sauna together, visiting a ‘party’, and he would be sleeping in Morrison’s bed later. The boy managed to sneak out of the house unseen, get back on a train to Harting, and tell his father what had happened. A local policeman was called, and the boy was taken to a police doctor, with medics telling the father afterwards that his son had ‘certainly been sexually abused’. Two detectives from Scotland Yard took a full statement from the boy, who soon afterwards received calls at home from various men in London asking where he was, which he attributed to Morrison panicking after he had disappeared. Nothing more happened until two Scotland Yard officers arrived on the family’s doorstep a year later, with the boy’s clothes in a bag, saying that the man in question had been convicted in a Chelsea court, had been imprisoned for two years, and nothing else was to worry about. Only years later did the victim recognise Morrison as a prominent MP in the Thatcher government. Operation Fairbank continue to investigate this story (Bill Gardner, ‘Thatcher confidant raped boy and police covered crime up’, Daily Telegraph, January 5th, 2015). The man now says that:

I believe that Morrison was a high-profile guy so he got away with it. Either the police were paid off or they hushed it up because he was an MP.

“I was never the same after what happened – he ruined my life really. I left school soon afterwards because I lost all my confidence. I couldn’t handle what had happened to me.

Scotland Yard, in January 2015, were unable to confirm whether Morrison had been investigated at the time (Rebecca Camber, ‘Tory MP who was Thatcher’s confidant ‘raped my 14-year-old son at paedophile guest house’, Daily Mail, January 4th, 2015). More ominously, it was revealed that the body of the murdered Vishal Mehortra was found in woodland in Rogate, less than two miles from Harting (‘Thatcher aide could be linked to body found in Rogate’, Midhurst and Petworth Observer, January 10th, 2015).

However, since then reports have alleged that Morrison was arrested twice for picking up men at the toilets at Piccadilly tube, taken to West End Central police station in Savile Row and let off with a caution each time (a second caution is very unusual); the Met are trying to track down officers who were involved with the arrests. There are also rumours of Morrison’s having been caught making similar approaches at toilets in Crew railway station in Cheshire. These have all led to a probe into police corruption and high-level cover-up (Nick Dorman, ‘Probe over claims Margaret Thatcher aide escaped prosecution because of Establishment links’, Sunday People, July 18th, 2015; Martin Beckford, ‘Met launch probe into Maggie aide and its own cover up’, Mail on Sunday, July 19th, 2015). A later report made clear that one of the offences for which Morrison was arrested involved a 15-year old boy (Matt Chorley, ‘Senior Westminster figures from 1970s and 1980s including former Home Secretary Leon Brittan named in government child abuse files’, Daily Mail, July 22nd, 2015).

The following are the recollections of Grahame Nicholls, who ran the Chester Trades Council (Morrison was the MP for Chester from 1974 to 1992), who wrote:

After the 1987 general election, around 1990, I attended a meeting of Chester Labour party where we were informed by the agent, Christine Russell, that Peter Morrison would not be standing in 1992. He had been caught in the toilets at Crewe station with a 15-year-old boy. A deal was struck between Labour, the local Tories, the local press and the police that if he stood down at the next election the matter would go no further. Chester finished up with Gyles Brandreth and Morrison walked away scot-free. I thought you might be interested. (cited in ‘Simon Hoggart’s week’, The Guardian, November 16th, 2012).

Former MP for Chester (1997-2010), Christine Russell

This week, it has emerged that previously undiscovered files exist on Morrison (and Leon Brittan, former Wokingham MP Sir William van Straubenzee, and others including a figure named only as ‘Vanessa the Undresser’) which are thought to relate to abuse, and were not seen by Peter Wanless and Richard Whittam QC when preparing their earlier report (a supplement has been published here) (Tom Parmenter, ‘Key Westminster Figures in Child Abuse Papers’, Sky News, July 23rd, 2015). A report in The Times has named Morrison as an MP about whom communications took place in November 1986 between the late Sir Antony Duff (1920-2000), then head of MI5, and Sir Robert Armstrong, then cabinet secretary. Two sources had approached senior officials with reports that Morrison had ‘a penchant for small boys’. He was questioned about these but the security services accepted his claims that the allegations were false (Daniel Martin, ‘Secret files ‘show MI5 let abuse claim MP off hook’: Security chief said the case would ’embarrass the Government”, Daily Mail, July 22nd, 2015). Duff concluded ‘The risks of political embarrassment to the Government is rather greater than the security danger’ (clearly the interests of the victims did not even filter into Duff and Armstrong’s calculations, as has been commented upon by many, including Wanless and a spokesperson for NSPCC) (Sean O’Neill and Gabriella Swerling, ‘Child abuse suspect was Thatcher aide’, The Times, July 24th, 2015 [see below]; Daniel Martin, ‘Secret files ‘show MI5 let abuse claim MP off the hook’: Security chief said the case would ’embarrass the Government’, Daily Mail, July 22nd, 2015; ‘Child abuse: PM Tells Police – No Limits’, Sky News, July 23rd, 2015; Joseph Watts, ”Child abuse’ files must give justice to victims, says NSPCC chief’, Evening Standard, July 23rd, 2015). Approached a few days ago by The Times, Armstrong had the following to say:

My official business was the protection of national security. I have to stress that there was nothing like evidence in this case. There was just a shadow of a rumour. It’s impossible to take investigative action on shadows of rumours. . . If there is some reason to think a crime has been committed, then people like the cabinet secretary are not to start poking their noses into it. It’s for the police to do that.

To the Mail, Armstrong (who would not name Morrison to them), said:

I thought MI5’s actions were correct at the time. I think they were right to report the rumour, they were right to make what inquiries they could and they were right to come to the conclusion they did. I think if there was evidence it would have been properly examined at the time. I don’t think this is a matter of important people being protected. You can’t pursue inquiries unless you have evidence on which you can base the enquiry. A shadow of a rumour is not enough.

He went on to say ‘I think he [Morrison] was interview but he denied it. It is not my position to name him’, and did not know if Thatcher was made aware of the MI5 decision, which drew a furious response from Rochdale MP and long-term campaigner against child abuse Simon Danczuk (Vanessa Allen, Claire Ellicott and Daniel Martin, ‘I won’t name child abuse MP; Fury as Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet chief defends failure to act over senior Tory’, Daily Mail, July 24th, 2015). See also Armstrong’s non-committal response to questions sent to him by investigative journalist Tim Tate, and Tate’s own blog on this.

Armstrong, who once became notorious for using the phrase ‘economical with the truth’ when involved in trying to prevent the publication of Peter Wright’s Spycatcher (Sue Reid, ‘Mandarin who can’t help being economical with truth: Lord Armstrong at centre of accusations of child abuse cover-up’, Daily Mail, July 24th, 2015), also has past form in terms of his dismissive responses to the entreaties by pianist and whistleblower Martin Roscoe for the Royal Northern College of Music, of which Armstrong was the chair of the board of governors in 2002, not to employ violinist Malcolm Layfield as their Head of Strings, after his record of sexually exploiting girls at Chetham’s School (see Charlotte Higgins, ‘After Michael Brewer: the RNCM teacher’s story’, The Guardian, February 13th, 2013; ‘Correspondence over appointment of Malcolm Layfield at Royal Northern College of Music’, The Guardian, February 8th, 2013).

On top of everything else, the Labour MP John Mann published a series of important tweets: ‘In 1984 Geoffrey Dickens gave Leon Brittan as Home Secretary a further list of alleged paedophiles linked directly to Peter Morrison’; ‘What happened to the list of Peter Morrison linked paedophiles given to Home Secretary in 1984? And why was no action taken?’; ‘I have just met person who gave list of Peter Morrison linked paedophiles to Geoffrey Dickens. Astonishing developments and cover ups’; ‘The new list of Dickens names was entirely different to first. It was given to him precisely because of publicity about his initial action’ all of which suggests new dimensions to the files supplied by Dickens to then Home Secretary Leon Brittan.

Sir Peter Morrison (1944-1995) was known, according to an obituary by Patrick Cosgrove, as a right winger who disliked immigration, supported the return of capital punishment, and wished to introduce vouchers for education. He was from a privileged political family; his father, born John Morrison, became Lord Margadale, the squire of Fonthill, led the campaign to ensure Alec Douglas-Home became Prime Minister in 1963, and predicted Thatcher’s ultimate accession to the leadership (Sue Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’, Daily Mail, July 12th, 2014, updated July 16th). The young Peter attended Eton College, then Keble College, Oxford. Entering the House of Commons in 1974 at the age of 29, during the first Thatcher government he occupied a series of non-cabinet ministerial positions, then became Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party in 1986, replacing Jeffrey Archer after his resignation, and working under Chairman Norman Tebbit. His sister, Dame Mary Morrison, became a lady-in-waiting to the Queen (Gyles Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’: In a brave and haunting account, TV star and ex MP Gyles Brandreth reveals the years of abuse he endured at prep school’, Daily Mail, September 12th, 2014).

Morrison was close to Thatcher from when he entered Parliament (see Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (London: Harper Collins, 1993), p. 837), working for her 1975 leadership campaign and, after she became Prime Minister, putting her and Denis up for holiday in the 73 000 acre estate owned by his father in Islay, where games of charades were played (Jonathan Aitken, Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 158-160, 279-281); Thatcher stayed there after her 1979 election victory, together with Morrison and also Leon Brittan (see the image below of the three of them, from Tom Shields, ‘Mrs T weathers rainy day blues’; Glasgow Herald, August 17th, 1979; see also Michael White’s his obituary of Brittan on how he helped to ‘keep her entertained during her reluctantly taken holidays’; Michael White, ‘Leon Brittan: Thatcher’s protege turned scapegoat’, The Guardian, January 22nd, 2015) Lord Margadale had previously entertained Princess Alexandra, Harold Macmillan and Ted Heath there. Morrison himself said in 1979 that Thatcher likely knew the people of Islay better than any others, except for in her constituency of Finchley (Tom Shields, ‘Not even on Islay can Mrs Thatcher get away from it all’, Glasgow Herald, August 16th, 1979; Tom Shields, ‘Islay estate sacks half its workers’, Glasgow Herald, August 2nd, 1982).

After being appointed as Thatcher’s Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1990, Morrison ran what is generally believed to have been a complacent and lacklustre leadership campaign for her when she was challenged by Michael Heseltine; as is well-known, she did not gain enough votes to prevent a second ballot, and then resigned soon afterwards. Morrison was known to some others as ‘a toff’s toff’, who ‘made it very clear from the outset that he did not intend spending time talking to the plebs’ on the backbenches (Stephen Norris, Changing Trains: An Autobiography (London: Hutchinson, 1996), p. 149).

Jonathan Aitken, a close friend of Morrison’s, would later write the following about him:

I knew Peter Morrison as well as anyone in the House. We had been school friends. He was the best man at my wedding in St Margaret’s, Westminster. We shared many private and political confidences. So I knew the immense pressures he was facing at the time when he was suddenly overwhelmed with the greatest new burden imaginable – running the Prime Minister’s election campaign.

Sixteen years in the House of Commons had treated Peter badly. His health had deteriorated. He had an alcohol problem that made him ill, overweight and prone to take long afternoon naps. In the autumn of 1990 he became embroiled in a police investigation into aspects of his personal life. The allegations against him were never substantiated, and the inquiry was subsequently dropped. But at the time of the leadership election, Peter was worried, distracted and unable to concentrate. (Aitken, Margaret Thatcher, pp. 625-626).

An important article by Nick Davies published in The Guardian in April 1998, also made the following claim:

Fleet Street routinely nurtures a crop of untold stories about powerful abusers who have evaded justice. One such is Peter Morrison, formerly the MP for Chester and the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Ten years ago, Chris House, the veteran crime reporter for the Sunday Mirror, twice received tip-offs from police officers who said that Morrison had been caught cottaging in public toilets with underaged boys and had been released with a caution. A less powerful man, the officers complained, would have been charged with gross indecency or an offence against children.

At the time, Chris House confronted Morrison, who used libel laws to block publication of the story. Now, Morrison is dead and cannot sue. Police last week confirmed that he had been picked up twice and never brought to trial. They added that there appeared to be no trace of either incident in any of the official records. (Nick Davies, ‘The sheer scale of child sexual abuse in Britain’, The Guardian, April 1998).

Recently, the former editor of the Sunday Mirror, Paul Connew, has revealed how he was told in 1994 by House of the stories concerning Morrison. Connew has revealed that it was a police officer who was the source, dismayed by the lack of action after Morrison had been arrested for sexually molesting under-age boys; the officer revealed how Morrison had attempted to ‘pull rank’ by demanding to see the most senior officer, and announcing proudly who he was. All the paperwork relating to the arrest simply ‘disappeared’. Connew sent a reporter to confront Morrison at his Chester home, but Morrison dismissed the story and made legal threats, which the paper was not able to counter without naming their police source, which was impossible. The story ultimately died, though Connew was able to establish that in the senior echelons of Scotland Yard, Morrison’s arrest and proclivities were no secret; he had been arrested on multiple occasions in both Chester and London, always hushed up (Paul Connew, ‘Commentary: how paedophile Peter Morrison escaped exposure’, Exaro News, September 26th, 2014).

In an article in the Daily Mail published in October 2012, former Conservative MP and leader of the Welsh Tories Rod Richards claimed that Morrison (and another Tory grandee who has not been named) was connected to the terrible abuse scandals in Bryn Estyn and Bryn Alyn children’s homes, in the Wrexham area of North Wales, having seen documents which identified both politicians as frequent, unexplained visitors. Richards also claimed that William Hague, who was Secretary of State for Wales from 1995 to 1997, and who set up the North Wales Child Abuse inquiry, would have seen the files on Morrison, but sources close to Hague denied that he had seen any such material. A former resident of the Bryn Estyn care home testified to Channel 4 News, testified to seeing Morrison arrive there on five occasions, and may have driven off with a boy in his car (‘Exclusive: Eyewitness ‘saw Thatcher aide take boys to abuse”, Channel 4 News, November 6th, 2012; see also Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’).

Rod Richards

The owner of Bryn Alyn and other homes, John Allen, was sentenced to life in December 2014 for sexual abuse of 18 boys and one girl there (‘Children’s home boss John Allen jailed for life for campaign of sex abuse’, Daily Telegraph, December 1st, 2014), and was revealed to be a friend of Michael John Carroll, who was abusing children in homes in the London borough of Lambeth (Tom Pettifor and Elwyn Roberts, ‘Two notorious paedophiles at centre of nationwide network of abusers including Tory and Labour politicians, Daily Mirror, December 1st, 2014). The implications – that Morrison was connected not just to abuse in North Wales but also to a wider ring of abusers – are almost too horrifying to contemplate, but must be considered (see also my collection of reports on abuse in Lambeth, which I will update soon).

John Allen

More stories and allegations have emerged about a Wrexham paedophile ring operative in the 1970s and 1980s, and trials are ongoing, so I will just link to a few articles about these (James Tozer, ‘Police probe into historic paedophile ring reveals 140 victims allege abuse by 84 people at 18 care homes across North Wales’, Daily Mail, April 29th, 2013; David Holmes, ‘Chester man alleges his child abuse claims were ignored for more than a decade’, The Chester Chronicle, December 3rd, 2014; Steven Morris, ‘Wrexham paedophile ring preyed on boys in north Wales, court told’, The Guardian, April 21st, 2015; ”Predatory’ paedophiles abused boys in Wrexham in the 1980s’, BBC News, April 21st, 2015; ‘Historic Predatory Paedophile Ring In Wrexham Convicted’, Wrexham.com, July 2nd, 2015; Steven Morris, ‘Five men found guilty of being members of ‘predatory paedophile ring”, The Guardian, July 3rd, 2015). As far as those who have been convicted is concerned, it is a matter of paramount importance to establish whether Morrison was acquainted with any of them. The 2000 Waterhouse Inquiry Report concluded that there was a paedophile ring operative in Chester and Wrexham (‘Waterhouse Inquiry: recommendations and conclusions’, The Telegraph, November 6th, 2012), thus linking North Wales abuse to Morrison’s own constituency.

Morrison’s successor as MP for Chester, Gyles Brandreth, told the press that he and his wife Michelle had been told on the doorstep repeatedly and emphatically that the MP was ‘a disgusting pervert’ (David Holmes, ‘Former Chester MP Peter Morrison implicated in child abuse inquiry’, Chester Chronicle, November 8th, 2012). This appeared in Brandreth’s book, Breaking the Code: Westminster Diaries (London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), p. 54, in the entry for September 12th, 1991 (taken from the entry ‘Brandreth on the child abuser Peter Morrison MP’, cathyfox blog, July 26th, 2015):

In a build-up to the launch of a new edition of Brandreth’s book (London: Biteback Publishing, 2014), which suggested major new revelations but delivered little, Brandreth merely added that when canvassing in 1991 ‘we were told that Morrison was a monster who interfered with children’, and added:

At the time, I don’t think I believed it. People do say terrible things without justification. Beyond the fact that his drinking made Morrison appear unprepossessing — central casting’s idea of what a toff paedophile might look like — no one was offering anything to substantiate their slurs.

At the time, I never heard anything untoward about Morrison from the police or from the local journalists — and I gossiped a good deal with them. Four years after stepping down, Peter Morrison was dead of a heart attack.

Gyles Brandreth.

What did Mrs Thatcher know of his alleged dark side? When I talked to her about him, I felt she had the measure of the man. She knew he was homosexual, and she knew he was a drinker. She was fond of him, clearly, but told me that he had ruined himself through ‘self-indulgence’ — much as Reginald Maudling had done a generation earlier. (Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’)

Brandreth did however crucially mention that William Hague had told him in 1996 that Morrison’s name might feature in connection with the inquiry into child abuse in North Wales, specifically in connection to Bryn Estyn, thus corroborating Rod Richard’s account, though Brandreth also pointed out that the Waterhouse report made no mention of Morrison (Brandreth, ”I was abused by my choir master’).

At present, William Hague (who retired from the Cabinet and Parliament quite suddenly, stepping down at the 2015 election, in circumstances which have never been fully explained) is expected to be heavily criticised in a forthcoming report on the North Wales abuse scandal, from the Macur inquiry, to which Rod Richards gave evidence (Glen Owen and Brendan Carlin, ‘Hague faces cover-up row over Thatcher ally’s link to care home abuse scandal: Former foreign secretary said to have been made aware of Sir Peter Morrison’s connections while working as Welsh secretary, Mail on Sunday, May 31st, 2015).

On top of all of this, Morrison’s name has surfaced in connection with another murder inquiry (as well as that of Vishal Mehortra), of Martin Allen, who disappeared on Bonfire Night 1979, and has never been found. Morrison was amongst those (together with Peter Hayman and Leon Brittan) who visited the cottage in Kensington of Allen’s father, who was chief chauffeur at the Australian High Commission (Don Hale, ‘Witness comes forward in Martin Allen case linked to Westminster paedophile ring’, Daily Star, April 12th, 2015).

The journalist Simon Heffer has also said that rumours about Morrison were circulating in Tory top ranks as early as 1988, whilst Tebbit has admitted hearing rumours ‘through unusual channels’, then confronting Morrison about them, which he denied (Reid, ‘Did Maggie know her closest aide was preying on under-age boys?’); Tebbit, who has suggested that a cover-up of high-level abuse by politicians is likely, now concedes that he had been ‘naive’ in believing Morrison, and rejected Currie’s account of Morrison having admitted his offences to him (James Lyons, ‘Norman Tebbit admits he heard rumours top Tory was paedophile a decade before truth revealed’, Daily Mirror, July 8th, 2014). In a recent interview, Tebbit has given a slightly different rendition of things, claiming that he had ‘heard stories that Peter had an unhealthy interest in young men but not that it was with underage children. I confronted him about this, he denied it flat’ (Marie Woolf, ‘Tebbit quizzed MP on sex claims’, The Sunday Times, July 26th, 2015). He also refused to say who had told him about Morrison, saying somewhat cryptically:

There was no official contact. I choose my words carefully. I will just say that I was made aware. I was not sent a file.

Furthermore, Tebbit claimed he had had ‘no reason to believe Downing Street was aware of the allegation’, and had not contacted Thatcher about it, nor pursued the matter with the police, as he assumed they had no evidence and would not press charges (which raises the question of whether it was the police who told him).

Other Tory politicians recall John Wakeham, Chief Whip from June 1983 to January 1987 (see Wakeham’s profile at parliament.uk) telling them, after coming to him with reports of Morrison’s cottaging skirmishes, ‘If someone brings me some evidence I can do something about it, if required’. Another Tory said ‘It never got out, but people said ‘they’ll never be able to do that for Peter again’ (Michael White, ‘Politicians regret complacency over alleged establishment child abuse’, The Guardian, March 17th, 2015).

The novelist Frederick Forsyth, on the other hand, described Morrison as someone ‘who should have been exposed many years ago’, as well as being a politically incompetent alcoholic; however, as far as his sexual offences were concerned, Forsyth claimed Thatcher ‘suspected nothing’ (Frederick Forsyth, ‘Debauched and dissolute fool’, The Express, July 18th, 2014). Later he called Morrison an ‘awful slut’ who was ‘now exposed at last as a ruthless boy-molester’ (Frederic Forsyth, ‘Mrs Thatcher should have chosen better’, Sunday Express, January 9th, 2015).

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with her private secretary Peter Morrison arriving for the Ian Gow memorial service at St. Margaret’s, Westminister, London.

Recently, Thatcher’s bodyguard Barry Strevens has come forward to claim that he told Thatcher directly about allegations of Morrison holding sex parties at his house with underage boys (one aged 15), when told about this by a senior Cheshire Police Officer. (see Lynn Davidson, ‘Exclusive: Thatcher’s Bodyguard on Abuse Claims’, The Sun on Sunday, July 27th, 2014 (article reproduced in comments below); and Matt Chorley, ‘Barry Strevens says he told Iron Lady about rumours about Peter Morrison’, Mail on Sunday, July 27th, 2014; see also Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith, ‘Thatcher ‘was warned of Tory child sex party claims’’, The Independent, July 27th, 2014). Strevens claimed to have had a meeting with the PM and her PPS Archie Hamilton (now Baron Hamilton of Epsom), which he had requested immediately. Strevens had claimed this was right after the Jeffrey Archer scandal; Archer resigned in October 1986, whilst Hamilton was Thatcher’s PPS from 1987 to 1988. Strevens recalls Thatcher simply thanking him and that was the last he heard of it. He said:

I wouldn’t say she (Lady Thatcher) was naive but I would say she would not have thought people around her would be like that.

I am sure he would have given her assurances about the rumours as otherwise she wouldn’t have given him the job.

Strevens spoke again to the press in May 2015, to clarify further his account given in July 2014: he said that he had been told by a senior officer in Chester of rumours of under-aged boys attending sex parties at a home owned by Morrison. According to Strevens, Archie Hamilton ‘took notes and they thanked me’ (Hamilton recalls the officer being at Downing Street, but no mention of under-age boys), listened to him, and left it at that. Four years later, Thatcher recommended Morrison for a knighthood, which he received (Jonathan Corke, ‘Margaret Thatcher knew paedophile Tory’s sick secret but STILL secured him a knighthood; The former PM also recommended alleged abuser Leon Brittan and is claimed to have been aware of allegations about fellow knights Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith’, Sunday People, May 9th, 2015)

Barry Strevens

Strevens with Thatcher

Danczuk, who says that he met someone who alleges that Morrison raped him, made clear that in his view ‘There is little doubt in my mind that Margaret Thatcher turned a blind eye to known paedophiles from Peter Morrison to Cyril Smith and the rest.’ (James Lyons and James Gillespie, ‘Thatcher ignored Smith Abuse’, The Sunday Times, March 8th, 2015).

The accounts by Nicholls and Strevens make clear that the allegations – concerning in one case a 15-year old boy – are more serious than said in a later rendition by Currie, which said merely that Morrison ‘had sex with 16-year-old boys when the age of consent was 21’ (cited in Andrew Sparrow, ‘Politics Live’, The Guardian, October 24th, 2012). A further allegation was made by Peter McKelvie, who led the investigation in 1992 into Peter Righton in an open letter to Peter Mandelson. A British Aerospace Trade Union Convenor had said one member had alleged that Morrison raped him, and he took this to the union’s National HQ, who put it to the Labour front bench. A Labour minister reported back to say that the Tory Front Bench had been approached. This was confirmed, according to McKelvie, by second and third sources, and also alleged that the conversations first took place at a 1993-94 Xmas Party hosted by the Welsh Parliamentary Labour Party. Mandelson has not yet replied.

In the 1997 election, Christine Russell herself displaced Brandreth and she served as Labour MP until 2010, when she was unseated by Conservative MP Stephen Mosely (see entry for ‘Christine Russell’ at politics.co.uk).

In 2013, following the publication of Hoggart’s article citing Nicholls, an online petition was put together calling for an inquiry, and submittted to then Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State Christopher Grayling. Russell denounced the ‘shoddy journalism’ of the Guardian piece, recalled rumours of Morrison’s preferences, but said there was no hint of illegal acts; she did not however rule out an agreement that Morrison should stand down (‘Campaigners ask for inquiry over ex-Chester MP’, Chester Chronicle, January 3rd, 2013).

Morrison is now widely believed to have been a central character in a network of high-level VIP abusers (see Keir Mudie, ‘VIP paedophile files: The sick web of high-powered and well-connected child abusers’, Sunday People, March 21st, 2015).

Further questions now need to be asked of Lord Tebbit, Teresa Gorman, Edwina Currie, William Hague and other senior Tories, and crucially of Frances Mowatt, not to mention Christine Russell and others in Chester Labour Party, of what was known and apparently covered-up about Morrison. Frances Maude (now Baron Maude of Horsham), the Minister of State for Trade and Investment, was PPS to Morrison from 1984-85 (see Maude’s biography at politics.co.uk), a crucial period, and also needs to be questioned on what he knew about his former boss’s activities. In March of this year, Maude, then Cabinet Minister, refused to make details of newly-found files public (Tom Parmenter, ‘Family Demands Names Of New Child Abuse Files’, Sky News, March 7th, 2015); it appears now that one of these files referred to his old boss Morrison. If money was involved in at least offers to Mowatt, as Currie alleges was told to her by Gorman, then the seriousness of the allegations is grave. In October 2014, Currie arrogantly and haughtily declared on Twitter:

@MaraudingWinger @DrTeckKhong @MailOnline I’ve been nicer than many deserve! But I take the consequences, & I do not hide behind anonymity.

@jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel @woodmouse1 I heard only tiny bits of gossip. The guy is dead, go pursue living perps. You’ll do more good

@woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel The present has its own demands. We learn from the past, we don’t get obsessive about it. Get real.

@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel And there are abusers in action right now, while you chase famous dead men.

@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel I’d rather police time be spent now on today’s criminals – detect, stop and jail them

@jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel @woodmouse1 Flattered that you think I know so much. Sorry but that’s not so. If you do, go to police

@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel They want current crimes to be dealt with by police, too. And they may need other help.

@ian_pace @woodmouse1 @jackaranian @Sunnyclaribel Of course. But right now, youngsters are being hurt and abused. That matters.

Considering Currie also rubber-stamped the appointment of Jimmy Savile at Broadmoor (Rowena Mason, ‘Edwina Currie voices regrets over Jimmy Savile after inquiry criticism’, The Guardian, Thursday June 26th, 2014) and clearly knew information about Morrison, including claims of bribery of a political agent, known to at least one other MP (Gorman) as well as herself, it should not be surprising that she would want claims of abuse involving dead figures to be sidelined.

Edwina Currie

This story relates to political corruption at the highest level, with a senior politician near the top of his party involved in the abuse of children, and clear evidence that various others knew about this, but did nothing, and strong suggestions that politicians and police officers conspired to keep this covered up, even using hush money, in such a way which ensured that Morrison was free to keep abusing others until his death. This story must not be allowed to die this time round. The actions of Duff and Armstrong (and Thatcher) may have sealed the fate of further boys who Morrison went onto abuse. That is the highest dereliction of duty imaginable.

The Times, July 24th, 2015
Sean O’Neill and Gabriella Swerling, ‘Child abuse suspect was Thatcher aide’

The Westminster politician protected by MI5 when suspected of child abuse was the Conservative MP Peter Morrison, who became one of Margaret Thatcher’s aides, The Times has learnt.

A Whitehall investigation was carried out in the mid-1980s after two sources approached senior officials with reports that Morrison had “a penchant for small boys”.

MI5 officers questioned Morrison, the MP for Chester and deputy chairman of the party, and accepted his denials. It is understood that the allegations were not reported to police. Four years later, in July 1990, he was appointed Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS).

Files recently uncovered at the Cabinet Office revealed a note about the incident sent in November 1986 by Sir Antony Duff, head of the Security Service, to Sir Robert Armstrong, the cabinet secretary. It said there was no threat to national security but the claims did carry “the risk of political embarrassment to the government”.

Sir Robert, 88 – now Lord Armstrong of Ilminster – said last night: “My official business was the protection of national security. I have to stress that there was nothing like evidence in this case. There was just a shadow of a rumour. It’s impossible to take investigative action on shadows of rumours.”

He added: “If there is some reason to think a crime has been committed, then people like the cabinet secretary are not to start poking their noses into it. It’s for the police to do that.”

Morrison, who died in 1995, had been a whip and a junior minister before he was made Thatcher’s PPS. His Times obituary said that he “had clearly reached his ministerial ceiling [in 1990] and it was an act of kindness on the prime minister’s part to appoint him as her new PPS”.

He held the job for four months until November 1990, when he mismanaged the party leadership contest that led to Thatcher’s resignation.

The documents referring to Morrison are in four miscellaneous files discovered by a Cabinet Office team this year.

Peter Wanless, chief executive of the NSPCC, who led a review into lost Whitehall documents on abuse scandals, said that the Duff memo revealed that “child safety came a poor second to preserving reputations of individuals or government departments”.

Writing in The Times today, he says: “It is plainly obvious . . . those at the highest level who once strode the corridors of power were putting their fear of political embarrassment above the risks to children.”

The documents have been sent to the Goddard inquiry into child sexual abuse which formally opened this month.

The Trial of Michael and Kay Brewer and the Death of Frances Andrade, and the Aftermath, 2013

Posted: August 12, 2014 | Author: Ian Pace | Filed under: Abuse, Academia, Alan Doggett, Chetham's, Music - General, Musical Education, PIE, Public Schools, Specialist Music Schools, Yehudi Menuhin School | Tags: alan doggett, channel 4 news, chetham's, chris ling, ciaran jenkins, clare moreland, Clifford Hindley, colet court, Duncan McTier, Frances Andrade, helen pidd, ian lake, jenovera williams, john vallins, kay brewer, Malcolm Layfield, martin roscoe, michael brewer, national youth choir, nicholas smith, Norman Lebrecht, operation winthorpe, paul gallagher, Philip Evans, Philip Pickett, philippa ibbotson, purcell school, quentin poole, robert waddington, robin brandon-turner, Robin Zebaida, ryzard bakst, st mary's school, st paul's, wells cathedral school, Wen Zhou Li, yehudi menuhin school | 7 Comments

[The following is an extensively redacted version of a wider document on abuse in musical education written in May-June 2013, edited in June 2014, for the purposes of briefing several politicians on the subject. Other sections from this document were included in my previous post ‘Reported Cases of Abuse in Musical Education, 1990-2012, and Issues for a Public Inquiry’, 31/12/13, updated 12/8/14, from which I reproduce the conclusions here]

The Trial of Michael and Kay Brewer

None of the cases of abuse in musical education (see my earlier post on the subject), however, would command anything like the same degree of shock and public attention as the trial, conviction and sentencing of Michael and Kay Brewer in 2013, which has served as a major catalyst for a wider debate on the dangers of abuse in musical education. As mentioned earlier, Michael Brewer had been Director of Music at Chetham’s since 1975, appointed at the age of just 30 to the most senior musical position in the school, and had remained in that position until resigning in 1994 (though he was still working on some collaborative projects with two teams from Chetham’s in coaching and leading workshops for hearing and vision-impaired children on a project based around Sir Michael Tippett’s A Child of our Time in 2005 – see Susan Elkin, ‘Breaking sound barriers’, Daily Mail, 29/3/05). The complainant, Frances Andrade, nee Shorney, who studied at Chetham’s as a boarder from 1978 to 1982 (leaving at the age of 17), had been known for some time to others concerned about abuse in musical education for her own campaigning activities. After hearing about Roscoe’s stance against Layfield in 2002, Andrade contacted Roscoe, to tell him about her abuse at the hands of Brewer (As revealed by Roscoe interviewed by Channel 4 News, 26/3/13). She had been pursuing the cases not only of Brewer but also various other teachers at Chet’s, and had spoken both to police and the Headteacher at Chetham’s, Clare Moreland (previously Claire Hickman) about these (Information communicated to the author by e-mail from a close friend of Andrade, February 2013; also through communications with Martin Roscoe and others).

In 2009 (sometimes reported as the summer of 2011), Andrade had confided in a friend, singing teacher Jenevora Williams, who worked with choirs in St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey, and was teacher-in-residence at the National Youth Choir of Great Britain (NYCGB), that she had been sexually abused by Michael Brewer and his then-wife Kay from the age of 14 when at Chetham’s (Nick Britten and Duncan Gardham ‘Frances Andrade ‘traumatised’ by reliving abuse of 30 years ago’, The Telegraph, 8/2/13; Russell Jenkins & Lucy Bannerman, ‘Choirmaster’s victim wanted to put past behind her’, The Times, 9/2/13; Nick Britten, ‘Suicide of choirmaster’s victim’, The Telegraph, 9/2/13; Tom Henderson and James Tozer, ‘Choirmaster who abused girls and the twisted wife who joined in’, Daily Mail, 9/2/13; James Tozer and Nazia Parveen, ‘Ordeal of Rape Trial’, Daily Mail, 9/2/13). Brewer was at this time still the principal conductor of NYCGB (of which singers ranged between the ages of 9 and 22), which he himself had co-founded and served as artistic director since 1983 (see ‘National Youth Choir’ and also this site); he was also internationally well-known for his choral work with young people and led the BBC programme Last Choir Standing in 2008 (see ‘Interview with Mike Brewer’, BBC, 17/7/08). Without Andrade’s permission, Williams (whose daughter Andrade was teaching violin) took this information to the police in 2011, on account of fear for the safety of children with whom Brewer was still working, saying later ‘I’d been wrestling with my conscience as to the most appropriate course of action…I knew raking it up would cause difficulties for people but I am a teacher and disclosure of sexual abuse is something we are trained to deal with’ (see Williams’ one interview after the verdict, in James Murray and Eugene Henderson, ‘I told police of abuser to save other children’, Sunday Express, 10/2/13.). Andrade would come to say in court that she was ‘being put under pressure to give evidence’ (ibid).

Michael Brewer was arrested around August 2011 (see Lucy Bannermann and Richard Morrison, ‘Paedophile choirmaster Michael Brewer worked with children after his arrest’, The Times, 15/2/13, in which it is asserted that there was an eight month gap between Brewer’s arrest and being charged), and following the police investigation, both he and Kay Brewer were charged with rape and multiple cases of indecent assault in April 2012 (Kim Pilling, ‘Choir Director charged with rape’, Press Association Mediapoint, 27/4/12. At the time of the arrest, one former Chetham’s student, Kathryn Turner, wrote as a comment on the blog of Norman Lebrecht that ‘Sexual abuse by staff was endemic at Chetham’s school which I attended between 1969-1980’. See Lebrecht, ‘Dreadful news: Chethams teacher and wife are charged with student rape’, Slipped Disc, 27/4/12). The NYCGB suspended Brewer from his position following his being charged and quickly issued a statement on behalf of their chairman of trustees, Professor Chris Higgins, that ‘These allegations relate to events over 30 years ago, before the choir was founded, and have nothing to do with the NYCGB nor Mike’s time as artistic director’ (‘Choir Director charged with student while at top music school’, The Telegraph, 28/4/12). Chetham’s themselves, understandably unable to comment on any specifics following the arrest, issued the following statement:

“Chetham’s School of Music takes all matters regarding the safeguarding of children extremely seriously and the welfare of our students is of paramount concern to all staff and governors.
“We are aware that Michael Brewer has been charged with offences that are alleged to have happened while he was employed by the school many years ago.
“We are co-operating with this investigation but while this matter is ongoing it would not be appropriate to comment further.” (cited in Russell Jenkins, ‘Music school couple in court on rape charge’, The Times, 8/6/12).

The trial of the Brewers took place beginning on January 15th, 2013, with Michael Brewer charged with one case of rape and 13 counts of indecent assault, and Kay Brewer charged with one count of indecent assault and aiding and abetting rape. Brewer was alleged to have regularly sexually abused Andrade in his office, touching her private parts, in his camper van, kept on school grounds, whilst he would also ask her to perform oral sex upon him outside of school, sometimes by a canal. She herself was said to have felt at the time, as a vulnerable teenager, that the abuse was a ‘small price to pay for the affection’; he had used ‘his power, influence and personality to seduce her’, using ‘flattery and affection’; Peter Cadwallader, prosecuting, had described Brewer’s personality as ‘dynamic and very charismatic’. After Kay Brewer had learned about Michael’s sexual interactions with Andrade, she was said to have confronted her when she visited their house (which appeared to be a regular occurrence, including after Andrade had left the school, at which time this particular event was said to have occurred), and said that she herself (Kay) had always wanted a sexual relationship with a woman, and so that Andrade ‘owed her’. Despite Andrade’s protestations that she was not interested, Kay made her go upstairs and performed sexual activity upon her, with Michael present and Andrade tied to a bed loosely with a belt (though apparently able to escape if required); after this Andrade was required to show Kay what she had done with Michael earlier, and he had non-consensual sexual intercourse with her. From the beginning of the trial, it was made clear that Andrade had had a troubled childhood, and was rebellious and drawn to drink from a young age, though was academically and musically talented (Kim Pilling, ‘Music School Boss denies Rape’, Press Association Mediapoint, 15/1/13; Russell Jenkins, ‘Choir director and wife ‘sexually assaulted pupil’’, The Times, 15/1/13).

Furthermore, Brewer was said to have pinned another 17-year old girl to a wall during a school trip, telling her ‘you want it really, don’t you?’, though no sexual activity resulted after the girl ran off, and had had a sexual affair with a further girl, then aged 16 in the early 1990s (involving highly explicit comments about her legs and breasts, leading to her being asked to strip topless, and Brewer exposing himself when she was in his office), leading to his being asked to resign from the school after being discovered by the then-headmaster (Peter Hullah) (Pilling, ‘Music School Boss denies Rape’).

Andrade herself first appeared in court on the second and third days (January 16th and 17th – see Chal Milmo, ‘Violinist found dead after testifying against her abuser’, The Independent, 8/2/13) and told the court that she now realised that she was in the hands of paedophiles, detailing how her relationship with Brewer had proceeded from kisses through intimate touching to full sex (intensifying when she was 15), with Brewer using various techniques of flattery and seduction, saying:

I felt nurtured in many ways, I felt cared for. I felt special, I was very flattered. I did not feel at the time I was a victim. It was a relationship that developed in a completely normal way. We would kiss, he would touch me.

Andrade also revealed how she had earlier been abused by an uncle as a child, and had not known any type of other relationship before Brewer. She described how he liked her to perform oral sex upon him whilst he drove, and how Kay Brewer apparently knew everything and also said how she ‘loved’ her. After leaving the school to study abroad, she continued to receive letters from Brewer, but lost interest after finding a new boyfriend. Andrade said that she had relegated the abuse to ‘a place where I could emotionally handle things’, traumatised by those others who would be affected by it, and had initially not wanted to go to the police herself, but had changed her perspective after being asked by detectives if the allegations were true. She was apparently suspended from the school for bad behaviour, and at this point had gone to live with the Brewer family (see below for further information on this which came to the author’s attention subsequent to the trial), and would travel with them on holiday and stay with them rather than other pupils on school trips. She also described Kay Brewer asking her to touch her breasts after undergoing reduction surgery. She had also confronted Brewer in 2002 about what he had done at the time of the Layfield affair, and given him an ultimatum to confess to the police (which he did not do) (Kim Pilling, ‘Woman tells of Music Boss Sex Abuse’, Press Association Mediapoint, 16/1/13; Russell Jenkins, ‘Choir leader sexually abused musician, court hears’, The Times, 16/1/13). She affirmed that it had been a friend who had told police, and that she had initially been unhappy (Jenkins, ‘Choir leader sexually abused musician’; a further report, James Tozer and Mario Ledwith, ‘Choirmaster began relationship with rape victim when she was just 14’, Daily Mail, 16/1/13, suggests that she told a ‘doctor’ about this, and that person told police, but this is probably just a confusion arising from the fact that Williams possessed a doctorate), whilst also mentioning that she had thought Brewer to be the ‘bee’s knees’ and a special teacher ‘who needed to be worshipped’ by pupils (James Tozer, ‘Choirmaster tied girl aged 16 to his bed and raped her while his wife watched’, Daily Mail, 16/1/13). Also especially notable in terms of Andrade’s perception of Brewer’s legitimising of abuse from other teachers was the following comment, made in the context of discussing Layfield:

This was where my anger came out. Several friends of mine had been raped. I rang Mike and blamed him for it, because he was having a relationship with me and hid what was going on at the school because of it. (cited in ‘I was subjected to brutal sex attack by former Chets boss and his wife’, Manchester Evening News, 17/1/13).

The following day, however, Andrade underwent intensive cross-examination at the hands of defence counsel for Michael Brewer, Kate Blackwell QC, who told the complainant that she was ‘indulging in the realms of fantasy’ and that she had ‘told this jury a complete pack of lies about the visit to this house’ (referring to the night when the rape was alleged to have taken place), asking how she could have ‘spent the night lying next to two of your rapists?’ Andrade replied in strong terms, claiming that she had felt guilty, had not known how to get out of the situation, and attacking Blackwell for having ‘no feminine understanding of what someone goes through like that. What shock your body goes through. How you almost feel you deserve it’. Bernadette Baxter, who represented Kay Brewer, also suggested that the allegations were ‘a complete fantasy’ which were ‘designed to get attention’, to which Andrade replied ‘If I wanted attention I would have done this an awfully long time ago’. One interesting detail from this day’s proceedings, however, was Brewer’s admission that ‘I’m always in a room with an adult now because I recognise I have a problem with being attracted to younger girls’ (Kim Pilling, ‘Woman ‘lied over choir boss rape”, Press Association Mediapoint, 17/1/13).

After Andrade’s defence of her own allegations, things went worse for Brewer the following day, January 18th, with the appearance in court of the woman who as a girl at Chetham’s (becoming head girl) had had a sexual relationship with him in 1994. Evoked by the prosecution in order to prove a pattern of unhealthy interest on Brewer’s part in teenage girls, the woman claimed that whilst she did not see the affair at the time as abuse (and recalled Brewer saying to her ‘I would not want you to think I am abusing my position’, which she then agreed he was not), but saw things somewhat differently now. She portrayed a rather sordid world of encounters in Brewer’s office and practice rooms, then how she attempted to end it before going to university, with Brewer resisting this, then described him exposing himself to her, being bought presents including matching watches (and also being given Winnie the Pooh books by Kay), and how he had admitted to her being involved with one other pupil (having frequently made comments about various pupils), who he called a ‘bad girl who seduced me into bed’. Then they were found together in Brewer’s office by Hullah (after a housemistress had been alerted, who herself started to listen at doors), leading to Brewer’s resignation, after which point he tried further to contact her, which she also resisted. In conversations with the authorities, the then-girl and Brewer agreed to maintain that their relationship consisted entirely of hugging and kissing, and it became agreed by Hullah (who appeared in court the same day) after he had discovered the two that a different reason would be given for Brewer’s resignation. Hullah himself described Brewer as ‘zany and unpredictable’ but with a ‘reputation as a highly professional voice trainer’, who apparently helped pupils with personal problems and strove to help them achieve high things (Kim Pilling, ‘Music Teacher ‘fondled student’, Press Association Mediapoint, 18/1/13. I personally recall it being suggested by some individuals (including a then-teacher at the school) at the time of Brewer’s resignation that this was due to some type of scam he had going with a manufacturer of strings or bows).

Following another day of proceedings, January 23rd, in which Michael Brewer mostly spoke to his defence counsel about his feelings of desolation at the break-up of his relationship with the girl in 1994 (using the phrase that he ‘effectively committed suicide’ after the girl’s mother recorded and passed to Hullah a phone conversation, in which Brewer promised to protect the girl for her remaining time at school), resignation (but then being awarded the OBE very soon afterwards) and also gave his own description of Andrade:

I saw her as a very talented, vivacious musician but I was already aware of her problems and her lack of discipline. She found practice very difficult.
Her creativity was exceptional and her application was really poor.
She was vivacious, dynamic, commanding on stage (but) underneath was insecure, depressive, hysterical and a fantasist.

Brewer went on to deny the charges of sexual abuse (or any sexual encounters) with Andrade, and alluded to the phone call he had received in 2001 [sic] from her accusing him of abusing her and calling for him to give himself up to the police, saying that he had contacted a solicitor and been advised not to respond until he received something in writing. Otherwise he mostly went on to describe his earlier life and career (Kim Pilling, ‘I was in love with teen – choir man’, Press Association Mediapoint, 23/1/13. By this time the number of press articles reporting the trial was increasing, but most of them essentially reiterated some of the material provided by the Press Association).

Perhaps most significant in this day’s proceedings was the fact that Judge Martin Rudland ordered that five of the charges of indecent assault upon a child must be recorded as not guilty due to insufficient evidence about the age of Andrade at the time of the allegations (ibid). This left eight further counts of indecent assault and a rape charge, but it is believed by some that the information about the dropped charges was received by Andrade (now back at her home in Guildford, following the trial through the media) that evening, leading her erroneously to believe that all charges had been dropped. At some point that evening or night, Andrade took her own life via an overdose , without leaving a suicide note; an iPad was found on her bed next to her by her husband Levine, with a story saying how these five charges had been dropped (Her body was found on January 24th. See Milmo, ‘Violinist found dead after testifying against her abuser’).

The extent to which Andrade’s death was provoked by this misunderstanding , or by trauma induced by being branded a fantasist and described in such unflattering terms by Brewer that day, or for that matter in response to Brewer’s own metaphorical evocation of the notion of suicide (bearing in mind that Andrade had had a previous history of suicide attempts) remains unclear, even after the recent inquest in which the coroner felt unable to deliver a verdict of suicide, on the grounds that he was unsure Andrade intended to kill herself (see Gemma Mullin, ‘Coroner slams mental health services for failing concert violinist who dies days after giving evidence against predatory paedophile former choirmaster’, Daily Mail, 25/7/14; Andy Crick, ‘Suicide is ruled out on victim of pervert’, The Sun, 26/7/14; ‘Violinist Frances Andrade ‘failed’ by mental health services’, BBC News England, 25/7/14; ‘Violinist Frances Andrade ‘did not kill herself”, BBC News UK, 25/7/14). However, news of the death quickly spread around the music world – together with the clear knowledge that this must not be mentioned publicly until after a verdict (and would be kept secret from the jury) – causing widespread shock and horror.

As the judge struggled with dealing with the fact of the chief complainant having taken her own life during the course of the trial, no further proceedings ensued until January 29th. Also at this stage, some further private discussions developed between myself, Roscoe, another woman who was a contemporary of mine at Chetham’s, D, and Philippa Ibbotson, a freelance musician and also occasional columnist on musical matters (but who had also written an article on sexual abuse – Philippa Ibbotson, ‘The hidden offenders’, The Guardian, 3/9/08) for the Guardian. I had already resolved at this stage to organise a petition calling for a public inquiry into abuse at Chetham’s and possibly elsewhere, having been aware of the allegations about Ling for over 20 years, and knowing some things also about Layfield, as well as recalling from my time at the school various male teachers having had sexual relationships with sixth-form girls (and in one case a woman having had a relationship with a boy); some of this was at the time gossip and hearsay, but often relatively clear to many who saw some of the ‘couples’ together, their body language and so on.

The editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, had been a pupil at Cranleigh School whilst John Vallins, headmaster of Chetham’s from 1974 to 1992, had been a housemaster and English teacher there; Rusbridger had invited Vallins to write a regular Country Diary for the newspaper following the headmaster’s retirement (John Vallins, ‘The Countryman and the Editor’, Cranleigh Contact No. 33 (April 2007), p. 5), which still continues to the present day. Nonetheless, Rusbridger was prepared to back comprehensive coverage not only of the continuing Brewer trial, but also wider stories about Chetham’s to be published after the trial’s conclusion. During the following two weeks, Ibbotson worked together with the young Northern editor of the paper, Helen Pidd, in consultation with Roscoe, myself and D (all of whom had connections to networks of former alumni from the school), determined to use this opportunity to reveal more of the wider abuse which had gone on at Chetham’s, concentrating above all on the cases of Layfield, Ling and Bakst (about whom evidence was coming to light of widespread groping and molestation of the majority of his female students over a period of almost three decades), seeking first-hand accounts such as would be demanded by The Guardian’s lawyers before allowing named accusations to be printed.

The trial finally resumed on January 29th with now relatively banal denials and cross-examinations of Michael Brewer by the prosecuting counsel concerning both the affair with Andrade and the former head girl in 1994, in which Brewer denied the former and minimised the extent of the latter (though admitting ‘chats’ with her when she was stripped to the waist) he did however admit that Andrade had stayed with his family at their house in Chorlton, south Manchester, allegedly because she had become too disruptive to remain in boarding (Pat Hurst, ‘No interest in schoolgirls: accused’, Press Association Mediapoint, 29/1/13; Helen Pidd, ‘Choir master accused of raping girl admits affair with another pupil’, The Guardian, 29/1/13; Russell Jenkins, ‘Music director enjoyed ‘wonderful’ chats with student stripped to the waist’, The Times, 29/1/13). Kay Brewer appeared in court the following day and tearfully denied any sexual contact with Andrade when questioned about the alleged rape, but admitting giving the girl in 1994 the Winnie the Pooh book, inscribed with a comment ‘Don’t worry about things, he is just a normal human being with all the same insecurities and doubts as you, love Kay’. By this time Michael and Kay Brewer had become estranged), and Kay described how she hoped this would provide another lasting relationship for him, whilst denying that he slept around and drawing attention to her own churchgoing activities (Kim Pilling, ‘Ex-wife denies ‘abetting’ rape’, Press Association Mediapoint, 30/1/13; Chris Riches, ‘Tearful wife denies helping choirmaster to rape girl, 18’, The Express, 31/1/13).

Earlier that week, the former Deputy Headmaster of Chetham’s, Brian Raby (who had retired in 1985), had been scheduled to appear as a character witness for Michael Brewer, but was dropped in favour of John Vallins, who was asked if aware of Brewer’s indiscretions with Andrade being ‘the talk of the school’, and of the deputy head calling in various students to make inquiries, both of which Vallins denied, saying of the later ‘I feel confident he would have passed on to me anything like that if he thought it merited serious concern’ (Pilling, ‘Ex-wife denies ‘abetting rape”).

Other figures provided character references for both of the Brewers. Lady Eatwell OBE, previously Suzi Digby nee Watts, founder of The Voices Foundation and conductor of multiple choirs, as well as a former judge on the BBC show Last Choir Standing which featured Brewer so prominently, spoke of him as ‘the world’s biggest influence in choral music for the young’, who had made the UK choral movement ‘one of the jewels in our crown’. Eatwell said that ‘Mike’ was ‘deeply concerned with the development of young people’, that ‘His personal integrity is 100 percent intact’ and ‘I’ve never heard a hint of impropriety’ (Riches, ‘Tearful wife denies helping choirmaster to rape girl, 18’). Conductor, flautist and music teacher Anastasia Micklethwaite described Brewer as a ‘wonderful man’ who had been an ‘inspiration to thousands of musicians across the world’, whilst harpsichordist Robyn Koh, a contemporary of Andrade’s at Chetham’s who had become her birthing partner and godparent to her sons, claimed Andrade had been known for being ‘prone to exaggeration’, and had never told her of being abused by the Brewers (Helen Pidd, ‘Ex-wife knew choirmaster accused of rape had affair with another student’, The Guardian, 30/1/13). Two different priests, Rev Richard Gilpin of St Clement Church in Cholrton, and Rev Stephen Brown of St Peter’s in Haslingden, spoke up for Kay Brewer, calling her ‘a very caring and responsible person’ and ‘sensitive, reliable and trustworthy’ (Riches, ‘Tearful wife denies helping choirmaster to rape girl, 18’; ‘Vicars in praise of shamed pair’, The Express, 9/2/13). Brewer’s second (and current) wife Sandra called Andrade ‘manic, hysterical and very loud’ when she had called and demanded to speak to her in 2001, but said that Brewer had revealed his relationship leading him to leave the school, and called him ‘a gentleman’ (‘Choirmaster admits being in love with sixth former’, Manchester Evening News, 30/1/13). Jenevora Williams, however, appeared to attest to her reasons for going forward to the police with the information provided her by Andrade (claiming that Andrade had agreed that she could pass on her name), and the moral dilemma she had faced, though also pointing out that she knew of no present incidents involving Brewer (Kim Pilling, ‘Teacher ‘wrestled with conscience”, Press Association Mediapoint, 8/2/13. This release is somewhat misleading as it gives the impression that Andrade had appeared again in court, when she was already dead by this point).

After a further delay occasioned by a juror having to be absent for several days, the jury retired following summings-up. Following two days of deliberations, they returned with a verdict on February 8th, finding Brewer guilty of five of the charges of sexual assault, and Kay Brewer guilty of one, though clearing both of the charge of rape (Nick Britten, ‘Woman sexually assaulted by choirmaster killed herself after giving evidence against him’, The Telegraph, 8/2/13).

The Aftermath of the Brewer Trial – Further Information on Chetham’s and Elsewhere

Press coverage following the verdict was overwhelmingly focused upon the dreadful news of Andrade’s death (See Nick Britten, ‘Woman sexually assaulted by choirmaster killed herself after giving evidence against him’, The Telegraph, 8/2/13; Nick Britten and Duncan Gardham, ‘Frances Andrade ‘traumatised’ by reliving abuse of 30 years ago’, The Telegraph, 8/2/13; Russell Jenkins and Lucy Bannermann, ‘Sex abuse victim killed herself after trial ordeal’, The Times, 9/2/13; Nick Britten and Duncan Gardham, ‘Destroyed by reliving abuse she hid for 30 years’, The Telegraph, 9/2/13.), which could now be published (and Andrade could be named as she was dead). Her son Oliver (one of four children) revealed his mother’s earlier suicide attempts, and claimed that her death had come about as a result of her having been called a ‘liar’ and ‘fantasist’ at the court. He also revealed that she had been advised by police not to receive any type of therapy until after the end of the case, which had dragged on for almost two years and become a big strain, and went onto criticise various aspects of the court system in such cases (Lauren Turner and Kim Pilling, ‘Teacher ‘let down’ by court system’, Press Association Mediapoint, 8/2/13; Kim Pilling and Emma Clark, ‘CPS defends itself over abuse case’, Press Association Mediapoint, 9/2/13), criticisms which were taken up by numerous other commentators, some focusing upon the harsh cross-examination she had undergone at the hands of Kate Blackwell, and various drawing upon comments from police chiefs, lawyers, politicians and rape counsellors (see Cahal Milmo, ‘Violinist found dead after testifying against her abuser’, The Independent, 8/2/13; James Tozer and Nadia Parveen, ”This feels like rape all over again’: Violinist driven to suicide by ordeal of trial after being branded a ‘liar and fantasist’ by woman QC’, Daily Mail, 8/2/13; Joan Smith, ‘For the victim trials can be a second ordeal’, The Independent, 8/2/13; Helen Pidd, Philippa Ibbotson and David Barry, ‘Sexual abuse victim’s suicide sparks call for review of court procedures’, The Guardian, 9/2/13; Nick Britten, ‘Suicide of choirmaster’s victim: Victim’s court ordeal raises questions over pressure on witnesses’, The Telegraph, 9/2/13; James Tozer and Nazia Parveen, ‘Driven to Suicide’, Daily Mail, 9/2/13; Chris Riches, ‘Suicide of choir director’s sex victim’, The Express, 9/2/13; Dan Thompson, ‘My tragic mum was driven to suicide by being branded liar in Chetham’s rape trial. Trial showed a dark past at Chet’s’, Manchester Evening News, 9/2/13; Elizabeth Sanderson and Tom Hendry, ‘My wife killed herself because she was on trial, not the choirmaster’: Husband’s anguished account of how abused wife spiralled to suicide after court ordeal’, Daily Mail, 9/2/13; Jerry Lawton, ‘Sex victim suicide after trial ordeal: Tragic violinist accused of lying takes own life’, Daily Star, 9/2/13; Stephen White, ”Cross-examination made me feel I’d been raped all over again’: Violinist who killed herself after giving evidence against her choirmaster abuser’, Daily Mirror, 9/2/13; Nafeesa Shan, ‘Choir perv’s victim kills herself after court ordeal: Fury over sex case trauma’, The Sun, 9/2/13l see also the Attorney General’s written answers to questions from Emily Thornberry MP on 27/2/13 and 1/3/13); the Labour MP for Stockport, Ann Coffey, backed by Childline founder Esther Rantzen, would later initiate a parliamentary debate on whether specialist courts were needed for sex abuse victims (Jennifer Williams, ‘Coffey’s Commons fight for sex abuse victims’, Manchester Evening News, 18/3/13; the House of Commons debate on 18/3/13; and ‘MP’s fight to protect abuse victims’, Manchester Evening News, 20/3/13). A string of articles portrayed a rather idealised view of Andrade, though some did mention her being given up for adoption as a baby, the death of her adoptive father soon before she auditioned for Chetham’s, her previous history of suicide attempts (dating right back to her time after first arriving at Manchester) and self-harm, and the fact that her abuse at the hands of her uncle had continued right up until her wedding (to Indian violinist Levine Andrade) in 1988 (see various previously mentioned articles, and Helen Pidd, ‘Michael Brewer’s victim told how much-loved teacher became abuser’ and ‘Frances Andrade: ‘a force of creativity”, The Guardian, 8/2/13′ ; Russell Jenkins and Lucy Bannerman, ‘Choirmaster’s victim wanted to put past behind her’, The Times, 9/2/13; Britten and Gardham, ‘Frances Andrade ‘traumatised”; Britten and Gardham, ‘Destroyed by reliving abuse she hid for 30 years’; Peter Walker, ‘Frances Andrade killed herself after being accused of lying, says husband’, The Guardian, 10/2/13; David Barrett, ‘Police argue over who told abuse victim: don’t get help’, The Telegraph, 10/2/13; Martin Evans, ‘Abuse victim Frances Andrade was told not to seek therapy, family claim’, The Telegraph, 10/2/13; Rachel Dale, ‘Sex victim death not our fault, says CPS’, The Sun, 10/2/13; David Leppard, ‘Violinist’s suicide: judge attacked’, The Sunday Times, 10/2/13; Jane Merrick and Brian Brady, ‘Chris Grayling’s rape comments raise fury after abuse victim’s suicide’, The Independent, 10/2/13; Peter Dominiczak, ‘Death of Frances Andrade will put other victims off coming forward, says Home Secretary’, The Telegraph, 11/2/13; Tom Rawsteon, ‘Rape trial ordeal drove my wonderful mother to six suicide attempts’, Daily Mail, 11/2/13; Chris Riches, ”Sacrifice’ of suicide wife in sex case trial’, The Express, 11/2/13; Martin Evans, ‘Police review after sex abuse victim’s suicide’, The Telegraph, 11/2/13; Nick Britten and Peter Dominiczak, ‘Violinist’s suicide could stop abuse victims coming forward, warns May’, The Telegraph, 12/2/13; Jonathan Brown, ‘Defence lawyers exploit the weakness of sex abuse victims, says police chief Sir Peter Fahy’, The Independent, 12/2/13. In a few other places some wider information was given about Brewer, mentioning how he had been nicknamed ‘Brewer the Screwer’, had likely groomed Andrade from the time she first entered the school, and was known by others to have asked girls in class to massage his shoulders and the like (Tom Henderson and James Tozer, ‘Choirmaster who abused girls and the twisted wife who joined in’, Daily Mail, 9/2/13).

The headteacher of Chetham’s, Claire Moreland, made a statement outside court to saying:

What we have learned during the course of the last four weeks has shocked us to the core. The passage of time between the offences and now does not lessen this shock.

“Mr Brewer has been found to have committed the most appalling acts which took place during his time at the school and he breached the trust placed in him by the school, its staff and, most importantly, the students.

“On behalf of the current school staff, I wish to express my profound and sincere apology and regret. And most of all I wish to express the sorrow and sympathy we feel for the family of our former student who died under such tragic circumstances and had to endure so much. (Cited in Pidd, ‘Michael Brewer’s victim told how much-loved teacher became abuser’. See also ‘Hurt caused by choirmaster Michael Brewer ‘must never be forgotten’, The Telegraph, 8/2/13)

Further ire was directed at the school’s having allowed Brewer to resign from his post on health grounds and thus remain working with children (Russell Jenkins, ‘Abuser quit on ‘health grounds”, The Times, 9/2/13). The NYCGB (who in an early statement went so far as to say ‘we hope that Mike Brewer’s legacies for young singers – including vocal excellence, outstanding performance opportunities, and exploring a vast repertoire – will remain core to NYCGB’s work’ (see Pilling and Clark, ‘CPS defends itself over abuse case’)) would in due course issue a statement denying all knowledge of any problems with Brewer prior to his being charged (without clarifying whether they knew of the circumstances of Brewer’s resignation from Chetham’s), and assuring readers of their operation of strict child protection policies (National Youth Choir of Great Britain, ‘News: Thu, Feb 14th 2013: Important Statement’; see also Norman Lebrecht, ‘National Youth Choirs of GB on its convicted ex-director’, Slipped Disc,. Further criticisms were aimed at NYCGB and their chairman, Professor Christopher Higgins, for allowing Brewer to continue to work with the choir during the eight-month period between his arrest and being charged, even following a concern being raised by a child protection official from Durham County Council back in October 2011; trustee Judy Grahame, chief executive of M&C Saatchi Arts, said that ‘The chairman seemed to be more concerned about protecting Mike Brewer than looking after the interests of the children, and I thought that was wrong’ (Lucy Bannerman and Richard Morrison, ‘Paedophile choirmaster Michael Brewer worked with children after his arrest’, The Times, 15/2/13; Nick McCarthy, ‘Abuser left in choir job after arrest’, Birmingham Mail, 15/2/13; Mark Tallentire, ‘Accused abuser kept in choir role’, The Northern Echo, 16/2/13).

The fruits of Pidd and Ibbotson’s investigations for The Guardian were printed over the course of the following week, creating a storm of negative publicity for Chetham’s and also the Royal Northern College of Music. First up was a story published on the day of the verdict concerning Layfield (Helen Pidd and Philippa Ibbotson, ‘Claims of sexual misconduct against second former Chetham teacher’, The Guardian, 8/2/13; see also Nick Britten and Peter Dominiczak, ‘Violinist’s suicide could stop abuse victims coming forward, warns May’, The Telegraph, 12/2/13), and a redacted version of the correspondence between Martin Roscoe and Edward Gregson concerning Layfield’s appointment (and Roscoe’s subsequent resignation) from 2002 (‘Correspondence over appointment of Malcolm Layfield at Royal Northern College of Music’, The Guardian, 8/2/13). Roscoe was widely perceived in the music world as having been vindicated and courageous for taking his stand (at considerable personal and emotional cost to himself, as he would reveal in interview) (see Charlotte Higgins, ‘After Michael Brewer: the RNCM teacher’s story’, The Guardian, 13/2/13), whilst four days later, Layfield would quit the RNCM board (Helen Pidd, ‘Ex-Chetham’s teacher quits RNCM board amid claims of sexual misconduct’, The Guardian, 12/2/13), and a week later than that would resign as Head of Strings at the college (Helen Pidd, ‘Teacher quits music college amid sex allegations’, The Guardian, 19/2/13). [This paragraph has been especially heavily redacted because at the time of writing, Layfield has been charged with one count of rape and is awaiting trial]

Next up was a series of horrifying accounts, featuring on the front page and in a large spread of the paper, bringing home to many the nature of the abuse of female students by Chris Ling, for which ten of his former students agreed to speak to the paper about their experiences, some when as young as 14. They spoke of his grooming and manipulation techniques, repeated groping, sexual touching under the pretext of a massage, requests for oral sex, use of systems of rewards and punishments (involving indecent spanking), requests for pupils to play naked in lessons and various else. One student spoke of how she took her complaints to headmaster John Vallins but nothing came of them (Helen Pidd and Philippa Ibbotson, ‘Pupils accuse third teacher of abuse at top music school’; ‘A musical hothouse where ‘Ling’s strings’ say they fell prey to abuse’; ‘Chetham’s school of music: former pupils speak out’, The Guardian, 10/2/13). Other victims contacted Pidd soon afterwards and there were further accounts of his abuse, his evocation of the figures of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady during lessons, or asking students to imagine being injected with a syringe of the HIV virus if they made a mistake, whilst one who used to clean Ling’s house at Reading at age 15 also detailed sexual assault involving nudity, blindfolding and spanking (Helen Pidd and Philippa Ibbotson, ‘Chetham’s school of music: further abuse allegations emerge’, The Guardian, 12/2/13; Helen Pidd ‘New claims emerge of sexual abuse at Chetham’s music school’, The Guardian, 13/2/13).

Pidd and Ibbotson also published accounts of five students of Ryszard Bakst from both Chetham’s and the RNCM, detailing how he would sexually assault them (sometimes as young as 13) on the sofa of his house, force their hands down his crotch until he became aroused, grope their breasts and place his hand up their skirts, sometimes disappearing in the middle of a lesson to masturbate. Bakst’s status at the school was made clear; it was said that ‘his general demeanour was quite intimidating’ and he exerted a ‘Svengali-like influence on many of his pupils’, how much of a privilege it was said to be to study with him, and how one pupil who confided in another teacher was told that this complaint should not be taken further as it would ruin some of his male students’ careers (Pidd and Ibbotson, ‘Chetham’s school of music: further abuse allegations emerge’).

Then, just six days after the verdict, many were further shocked by the news of the arrest of prominent flagship violin teacher Wen Zhou Li (who had earlier taught for a long period at the Menuhin School) on charges of rape (Helen Pidd, ‘Chetham’s music school violin teacher arrested on suspicion of rape’, The Guardian, 14/2/13). At the time of writing, Li has not yet been charged . Other journalists started to look more deeply into the culture of cover-up which had allowed Brewer’s abuse of Andrade to continue, asking various ex-students (including myself) about their knowledge of events at the time, and considering more deeply whether such abuse was an especial danger in the environment provided by a music school (see Amy Glendinning, ‘Chetham’s child sex abuse investigation widens’, Manchester Evening News, 14/2/13; Neil Tweedie, Nick Britten and Joe Shute, ‘Frances Andrade: A culture of abuse, denial and cover-up’, The Telegraph, 15/2/13; Richard Morrison, ‘The very act of teaching music made Chetham’s school ripe for fear and exploitation, say two famous alumni’, The Times, 20/2/13).

Immediately after the verdict, former Chetham’s pupils, many of who had been following the trial avidly, organised into new communities on social media to discuss their often conflicted responses to the conviction of Brewer, who had played such a prominent part in most of their schooling (as director of music, aural teacher, conductor of both orchestras and choirs at the school, and writer of reports on every single student’s progress). Divides quickly emerged: some were in denial about the verdict, others became angry about the aftermath with the new revelations about the school, many wanted to separate Brewer from anything else to do with the school, especially as it existed at present, whilst another equally large community was angered by the whole phenomenon, and began avidly discussing many other incidences of molestation, groping or other abuse, as well as a good deal of wider neglect and psychological abuse; these would remain topics of conversation for a good while. Some expressed the view that now was the time for former pupils to get behind the school at its time of need (a refrain which would be echoed soon afterwards by the management and their representatives), and for a while in amongst a 1970s and 1980s alumni community there grew bitterness towards mounting press coverage and intense hostility towards some of those (including myself) who clearly had some involvement with this. It became clear that many former pupils’ own sense of identity and reputations were quite intimately tied up with the reputation of the school, and any suggestion that the institution itself shared some responsibility were strongly rejected by that reason. Other hostility was directed towards Williams, blamed for forcing the court case in the first place (There are some hints of this perspective in Russell Jenkins and Lucy Bannerman, ‘Choirmaster’s victim wanted to put past behind her’, The Times, 9/2/13. However, Jenkins and Bannerman do quote Oliver Andrade, saying of Fran that ‘Sticking to her morals she knew she must do what was right, to tell the facts as they were and leave it to the law to decide, even as she was only just beginning to see that Brewer’s actions were indeed abuse’).

The pianist Peter Donohoe, a student at Chetham’s and the RNCM in the late 1960s and early 1970s, wrote a long blog post soon after the trial expressing his doubts about the institutions, and admiration for Roscoe in having stood up against Layfield, as well as expressing support for the ongoing petition (see below) (Peter Donohoe, ‘Sexual Abuse at Chethams and RNCM’, published early 2013). Questions were asked about Hullah (despite his having been responsible for the dismissals of Brewer, Layfield and Bakst), who went on to become a bishop (Norman Lebrecht, ‘Chetham’s head during sex abuse years became a bishop… and still heads a school’, Slipped Disc, 11/2/13).

Great Manchester Police made clear that they were now investigating the new allegations, and at first mentioned nine ‘key’ suspects (Helen Pidd, ‘Music schools sex abuse inquiry focuses on nine key suspects’, The Guardian, 18/2/13). This investigation (still ongoing) would come to be known as Operation Kiso. Meanwhile, in the light of continued negative press coverage, Claire Moreland wrote to all Chetham’s parents on February 18th to say the following:

As Half Term approaches, I am sure that you will be talking with your sons and daughters about the difficult events of the last few weeks and the ensuing media attention. With that in mind I would like to let you know that we have invited Manchester City Council Children’s Services into the School after Half Term to carry out a collaborative review with us of our Safeguarding Policy and Procedures. We welcome this visit which will take place during the week beginning 4 March. It is an opportunity for the School to demonstrate that we have robust Policies and Procedures in place which are applied routinely and rigorously.

We are confident that students are well protected. This has been borne out by inspections carried out by various government bodies in recent years. As you are aware, our procedures are also annually reviewed and approved by the Governing Body and have been regularly and independently reviewed by Ofsted and the Independent Schools Inspectorate.

Once the Police investigation into historical allegations has concluded we will of course be instigating an independent review of past events. I thank you for your continuing warm support and your understanding at this difficult time. Please do not hesitate to give me or any member of the pastoral team a call with any concerns, and in the meantime I wish you all a peaceful and happy Half Term break with your families. (Claire Moreland to Chetham’s Parents and Carers, 18/2/13, forwarded to the author)

The freelance critic Norman Lebrecht, who had earlier printed Nigel Kennedy’s revelations about the Menuhin School in 2003 and also coverage of the resignation of Peter Crook at the Purcell School in 2011, gave intense coverage to the Brewer trial and the fall-out from the verdict on his blog Slipped Disc, in various entries which provoked a flurry of responses. He invited the cellist Michal Kaznowski to write about sexual and psychological abuse from the late cellist Maurice Gendron in the late 60s and 70s at the Menuhin School, which led to other commentators (using pseudonyms, as was common on this blog) also relating their own unhappy experiences of the place (Norman Lebrecht, ‘It wasn’t just Chetham’s. Abuse was going on at Yehudi Menuhin School and elsewhere’, Slipped Disc, 10/2/13). Another article related allegations pointing to all of the three principal music colleges in London (the RCM, RAM, GSMD) (Norman Lebrecht, ‘Sex abuse in music schools: three fingers point to London’, Slipped Disc, 12/2/13), relating to cases which I and others working with me would discover more about in due course.

Together with two other former Chetham’s students, both pianists (and Bakst students), Paul Lewis and Tim Horton, a petition was launched in mid-February, for publication in The Guardian and then submission to the heads of the music schools and colleges, and all appropriate ministers and their shadow counterparts. The text was as follows:

In recent weeks, the ongoing allegations of historical sexual abuse at Chetham’s School of Music have put many aspects of music education under intense public scrutiny. Following the conviction of the former director of music, Michael Brewer, the tragic death of Frances Andrade, and extensive testimonies in the press of other abuse, it is clear that there should now be a full independent inquiry into the alleged sexual and psychological abuse by Chetham’s staff since the establishment of the institution as a music school in 1969. Such an inquiry would ideally extend to other institutions as well, some of which have also been the subject of allegations of abuse.

Recent press reports have suggested that during this time many students complained to senior members of staff about the sexually abusive behaviour of a number of Chetham’s teachers, but that no satisfactory action was taken. While it is of primary concern that those who stand accused should be investigated as soon as possible, if these allegations are shown to be correct it will be important to understand the wider implications of a school culture which facilitated such abuses of trust, and afforded alleged offenders long-term protection. For this reason, we ask senior members of staff from that time to account for what appears to be the severe failure of the school system to protect its pupils from those who exploited their positions of power. The prevalence of sexual abuse which appears to have continued unhindered over many years suggests an alarming lack of responsibility and competence in the management of a school which had, above all, a duty to protect the welfare of its students and to nurture the artistic potential of every pupil. That Chetham’s appears to have failed in this respect, and with such devastating consequences for the personal and professional lives of the alleged victims, now requires some considerable explanation from those who held senior positions of authority. (see Ian Pace, ‘Re-opened until May 31st, 2013 – Petition for an Inquiry into Abuse in Specialist Music Education’, Desiring Progress, 9/5/13, and the earlier entries (all replete with comments, some giving detailed information on abuse) from 16/2/13 and 19/2/13)

By February 19th, when it was published in The Guardian (Pidd, ‘Teacher quits music college amid sex allegations’, and ‘Call for inquiry into abuse allegations’, The Guardian, 19/2/13), the petition had gained around 550 signatories including over 200 former Chetham’s students; by the 24th, when it was closed for the first time, there were over 1000 signatories including over 300 from Chetham’s (including a number of former teachers), and various luminaries from the musical world (for my own reflections on the petition, see ‘Q&A: Ian Pace’, Classical Music Magazine).

During the short period when the signatures were being compiled, and also for a while afterwards, I myself received a huge amount of private correspondence, with many giving sometimes graphic (and deeply upsetting) details of much more widespread abuse spanning all five music schools and all the four major music colleges (as well as a few relating to other colleges, and to several choir schools). By this point I was now in possession of a huge amount of highly sensitive information which – if even only half of it were definitely true – pointed to there being a vast network of abuse in musical education over a long period.

For obvious reasons of confidentiality, I cannot divulge anything more than the overall gist of this information here. Suffice to say that, with respect to Chetham’s, further allegations relating to a very wide range of teachers (some of them familiar to me from my time there, but I was unaware of their being abusers), and to the situation also of students being sent away in the 1970s and 1980s to live with other people, including one especially alarming case involving kidnapping. I became aware of a very large number of alleged victims of Chris Ling, and of the fact that there might be as many as 50 (or even more) of Bakst over a period of several decades. Some claimed that when they went forward to the authorities or (in the case of Ling) to the police, they were ignored, or ostracised by teachers, houseparents and fellow pupils.

Over and above this, there were legions of stories emerging of physical and psychological abuse (some of which were unfortunately familiar): 11-year olds being violently struck over the head with large objects, blunt objects being thrown at pupils across the class, another student punched in the face by a 6’4″ teacher in front of a whole class, girls being pushed down to squash their breasts against desks by male teachers, students being publicly humiliated in front of others in wantonly cruel fashion, teachers casually smacking students on their behinds (in 2012!), liberal and enthusiastic use of corporal punishment, widespread bullying encouraged by teachers. Many stories came forward of long-term emotional instability and severe depression (and several successful suicides) from former pupils; whilst while at the school there were a great many serious eating disorders (including a hunger strike on the part of some girls which went unnoticed), much self-harm, and in the late 1990s an epidemic of suicide attempts; many were expelled afterwards. Various teachers would take out their own emotional insecurities on their instrumental pupils, one teacher regularly throwing her bags at them in a violent rage in lessons. Another would insist that she only needed 3 or 4 hours sleep per night and would insist that her teenage boys should make do with the same, to save more time for practice; one followed her instructions leading to a nervous breakdown.

The defenders of Chetham’s were now starting to become more public, and some of the community of parents and current pupils were enlisted in support of the school. Football correspondent for The Independent Ian Herbert, whose 12-year old son George was a pupil at the school, learning trumpet, piano and composition, wrote a spirited defence of the current school, standing up for head teacher Claire Moreland and director of music Stephen Threlfall, citing the conductor Paul Mann (who had interrupted applause at a concert he had recently given with the Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra in London to say ‘In case you’ve been wondering, this is what the real Chet’s is about’) on how the current child protection checks ‘bear out a world unrecognisable from the Brewer days’, and saying how current pupils ‘don’t recognise this picture which has been presented of their school’ (Ian Herbert, ‘The two sides of Chetham’s: what the press reports – and what the parents see’, The Independent, 1/3/13). Two leaders of one alumni group on social media posted an appeal for people to write to Judge Rudland to urge a lenient sentence for Michael Brewer (but were met with contempt by many others).

With the information of which I was in possession (further details below), I was concerned to find a way of making more of it public (subject of course to the consent of those who had entrusted me with it) in order to strengthen the case for an inquiry. I had already sent my petition to the appropriate people, but in time received non-descript responses from the heads of the specialist music schools (in the case of Chetham’s, only the bursar, not the head, replied), whilst after a while the Department for Education made it clear that they had currently no plans for an inquiry. A similar response was received by various others who had lobbied their MPs to write to the DfE. After being contacted by Channel 4 News, and receiving various assurances in terms of victim support and legal guarantees, as well as gauging that they were the news organisation most likely to treat this responsibly whilst having the potential to communicate to a wide audience, I worked for a while with a group of others to help both GMP with general information relating to Chetham’s, and also help Channel 4 News with a major feature looking at abusive behaviour in each of the major specialist music schools.

Whilst this was going on behind the scenes, for several weeks media coverage was quieter, until the sentencing of the Brewers on March 26th – Michael Brewer received a sentence of six years whilst Kay Brewer was sentenced to 21 months (Helen Pidd, ‘Chetham’s music teacher Michael Brewer jailed for sexually abusing pupil’, The Guardian, 26/3/13; Russell Jenkins, ”Predatory’ choirmaster Michael Brewer and wife jailed’, The Times, 26/3/13; Nick Britten, ‘Jailed: predatory sex abuser who drove victim to her death’, The Telegraph, 27/3/13; Anthony Bond, ‘Paedophile choirmaster and wife are jailed for sexually abusing former pupil who was found dead after giving evidence against him’, Daily Mail, 26/3/13; James Tozer, ‘Free in three years, abusive choirmaster whose victim killed herself’, Daily Mail, 27/3/13; Chris Riches, ‘Jailed, paedophile choirmaster and wife whose victim committed suicide’, The Express, 27/3/13; Nafeesa Shan, ‘Choir perv jailed: Suicide case paedo’s 6 yrs’, The Sun, 27/3/13). Brewer was said by Kate Blackwell to ‘extend his sorrow for Mrs Andrade’s death’, but he nonetheless ‘continues to deny any offending towards her’ . The judge’s verdict during sentencing was especially telling in terms of the responses of supporters of Brewer (a significant number of whom, including many prominent figures in the music and Manchester business communities, had apparently written to appeal to him for a shorter sentence):

14. It is surprising that all those who have spoken so well of you at your trial, when called by you in your defence, did so, it seems, in the full knowledge of your relationship with M. It may well be that they were not aware of the detail of the way in which you exploited her but they were apparently nevertheless more than happy to overlook one of the most shocking aspects of this case.

15. Indeed, perhaps one of the few positive features to have emerged from this case is the resulting close scrutiny of the seemingly wider acceptance of this type of behaviour amongst those who should know better. (‘His Honour Judge Martin Rudland, Manchester Crown Court, R –V- Michael Brewer and Hillary Kaye Brewer, 26 March 2013, Sentencing Remarks’; this was noted in Pilling, ‘Chetham’s school choirmaster Michael Brewer jailed for six years’; Pidd, ‘Chetham’s music teacher Michael Brewer jailed’ and Bond ‘Paedophile choirmaster and wife are jailed’)

This was accompanied by a new stream of broadcast reports, in several of which were featured anonymous accounts by former Chetham’s students of the abuse they suffered, and also how the authorities took no notice, and some talking about how abuse claims spread beyond Manchester (‘Sex abuse claims spread beyond Manchester music school’, broadcast on ITV, 26/3/13; ‘Chetham’s choirmaster Michael Brewer jailed for sexual abuse’, broadcast on BBC, 26/3/13 (text only); ‘Chetham’s teacher Michael Brewer jailed for sexual abuse’, broadcast on Channel 4, 26/3/13). Oliver Andrade also gave a much-admired TV interview, testifying to his mother’s bravery, arguing that the judge was fair, and refusing to countenance criticism of Kate Blackwell (‘Son speaks of late mum’s legacy after her abuser is jailed’, broadcast on ITV, 27/3/13; see also Mark Blunden, ‘Son of sex abuse victim backs defence lawyer’, The Evening Standard, 27/3/13).

Then in early April the reports by the Independent Schools Inspectorate and Manchester City Council into Chetham’s were made public, and it became clear that the school had been found severely wanting. The ISI report included the following:

On Child protection policy generally:
Discussions with staff indicated that not all are clear about the process to be followed when concerns are reported or allegations made, and the procedures specified by the school are not always implemented in practice – for example, the safeguarding concerns form is not always completed and informal discussions are held instead.

Parents’ views – in response to survey carried out recently by the school about music experiences provided by school and progress made by children in music:
Approximately one-third of parents responded, the majority positively, but a very small minority of parents indicated their dissatisfaction with the information they are given about their child’s progress in instrumental tuition, a factor mentioned at the time of the previous ISI inspection. Comments from parents in response to the ISI questionnaire confirmed that this remains an issue.

On Child Inspection regulatory requirements:

At the time of the inspection visit, the school’s child protection policy was found to cover most of the requirements which are the duties of proprietors of independent schools. However, the school’s written policy is not suitably comprehensive and has not been properly implemented. (ISI report downloadable here)

The Manchester City Council report included the following:

Section 4.1 (b) (viii)
No evidence was provided of any formal, minuted governing body/school committee meetings called so that leaders and governors could reflect on the implications of recent allegations in connection with the school, carry out appropriate scrutiny, audit and self evaluation and consider the need to conduct a comprehensive review of current safeguarding policies, procedures and practice;

(ix)
There was no evidence to confirm that governors had sought assurances about current safeguarding arrangements, given the context of recent allegations, resulting in convictions and arrests of individuals connected with the school. A current employee was arrested on 14th February 2013 in relation to an historic allegation, is presently suspended and is the subject of
ongoing police investigation.

Section 4.1(h)
There are inconsistencies in relation to the CPO, designated governor for safeguarding and the head of academic music’s understanding of school policy and procedures for teaching at the home of a tutor. This ranges from an understanding that pupils ‘wouldn’t ever have home tuition’, to it is not encouraged or sanctioned by the school and would only be agreed and arranged by parents, to if there was an exceptional circumstance that required teaching at the home of a tutor, there would be a risk assessment completed and parental consent sought. No reference is made to home tuition in the staff, pupil or parents handbooks. During interviews with pupils some pupils stated that home tuition regularly takes place.

Section 5.1(i)
It was the view of some pupils however, that there was little point in raising issues or concerns because they would not be listened to or acted upon. This was borne out in the pupils’ response to the ISI questionnaire. 36% of pupils responded negatively to the statement: ‘the school asks for my opinions and responds to them’, when a negative response of more than 20% is seen as significant by the ISI.

Section 5.1(d)
The named governor for safeguarding has been identified as the person other than a parent, outside the boarding and teaching staff of the school, who pupils can talk to if they feel the need. No reference is made of this in the pupil or parent handbooks. When pupils were asked about who, other than a parent/guardian they could turn to, some pupils cited the named governor for safeguarding, others did not know about such a person and one pupil referred to them as ‘some random person’ that they were told to contact if they needed to and added that they were told about this person in a recent assembly.

Section 6.1
The Local Authority saw little evidence that the Governing body/school committee have sufficiently held the senior leaders of the school to account regarding providing assurances that the current arrangements for safeguarding are actually being implemented, applied robustly, monitored appropriately or evaluated effectively. In the context of recent convictions, allegations and ongoing police investigations, where extra assurances would be expected, this is a cause for concern.

6.2 Arrangements are present to promote a culture and climate of effective safeguarding at Chetham’s School of Music but the arrangements are not routinely and reliably implemented, robustly applied, monitored or evaluated by the senior leadership team, governors and Feoffees. This demonstrates inadequate oversight of safeguarding by the proprietors and therefore the Local Authority is not confident about the overall effectiveness of the leadership and governance of safeguarding arrangements in the school.

6.3 The Feoffees as proprietors of the school have not effectively discharged their duties with respect to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of pupils. They have not ensured that the Headteacher has fulfilled her duties for the effective implementation of the school’s policies and procedures in regard to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of pupils.

6.4 It is our view that in similar circumstances, in a state-maintained school setting, the nature of these findings, including the current context referred to in 6.1 above, would lead us to invite the chair of governors or trustees to a formal review meeting to discuss the capacity for governance and senior leadership to address the failings identified. (full report accessible here)

Chetham’s responded on their website initially as follows:

Unfortunately we believe the time allowed for the Review was insufficient. We have made detailed written representations and submitted further documentation to both MCS and the ISI, seeking meetings with both organisations to discuss these points in detail. There is enormous interest in the School at the current time and it is imperative that Chetham’s, and all students, staff and parents associated with it, are treated and represented accurately.

[…]

In addition to further dialogue with the ISI and MCS, we will be seeking a meeting with the Department for Education to discuss the Review’s findings and share a detailed action plan to demonstrate how we are remedying the issues highlighted. (some of this statement is reported in Helen Pidd, ‘Music school at heart of abuse scandal failed to safeguard pupils, reports find’, The Guardian, 3/4/13; all of the above above is published on Ian Pace, ‘Publication of Reports into Chetham’s by ISI and MCC: Senior Management and Governors should consider their position’, Desiring Progress, 3/4/13. See also this later statement from Chetham’s from 8/5/13)

The response of the DfE was as follows:

Schools have a legal and moral duty to protect children in their care. It is clear from the Independent Schools Inspectorate and Manchester City Council’s reports of their joint visit that the standard of care at Chethams school must be improved.

“Today (Tuesday) under section 165(3) of the Education Act 2002, we have served a notice requiring the school to produce an action plan setting out what it will do to meet the regulatory standards. The law requires the school to produce an action plan to set out how it will address the deficiencies the ISI inspection identified.

“Chethams now has until May to produce the action plan — if the plan is inadequate the Education Secretary has powers to remove the school from the register of independent schools.” (Statement forwarded to the author by Ciaran Jenkins of Channel 4 News)

An increasing campaign was mounted by Chetham’s parents and pupils on the blog of Norman Lebrecht to refute the various claims and defend the school, in which a small number of deeply unhappy parents responded to a chorus of others (see Norman Lebrecht, ‘Manchester Council condemns Chetham’s for failure to address ‘recent allegations’, Slipped Disc, 3/4/13; ; ‘The skies just darkened over Chetham’s, Slipped Disc, 3/4/13). Key to the arguments posited (which had begun to emerge from the time of the Guardian reports in February) was the notion that it was wrong for these ‘historic’ allegations to be dragged up because of the hurt they caused current pupils. Text forwarded to Lebrecht via one parent revealed an organised campaign, with the apparent blessing of the head girl and Deputy Head of the School responsible for pastoral care (Norman Lebrecht, ‘Chet’s kids organize blog mob’, Slipped Disc, 5/4/13). At a meeting with parents at the beginning of term, Sunday April 14th, Claire Moreland was questioned by a few (though the majority appear to have been supportive) and was forced to reveal that current teachers were being investigated by GMP, giving a figure of ‘less than five’ (Norman Lebrecht, ‘How many teachers are being investigated at troubled music school?’, Slipped Disc, 17/4/13).

Channel 4 News continued to work on their report, which was broadcast on May 7th. The major revelation here, for the purposes of which the Channel 4 team had spoken to multiple pupils from who studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School in the 1960s and 1970s, was about the first director of music and co-founder of the school, Belgian pianist Marcel Gazelle, revealed as a serial abuser of girls as young as 10 in their beds (the broadcast was very careful in terms of what could be said both for legal reasons and because of the watershed, but many from the school at the time privately commented that the scale of Gazelle’s activities, allegedly involving multiple rape of older girls as well, was not always clear). For this broadcast, Nigel Kennedy was tracked down and persuaded to take on the record about Gazelle, revealing that he was the figure to whom he had referred in interview with Lebrecht back in 2003. The former student Irita Kutchmy chose to speak on the record about her own abuse at the hands of Gazelle, lending the broadcast, which alleged that abuse had gone on at all five specialist music schools, a vivid immediacy (Ciaran Jenkins, ‘Exclusive: Sex scandal implicates all five UK music schools’, Channel 4 News, 7/5/13). I immediately published on my blog a long article on Gazelle and the early culture of the Menuhin School, drawing upon accounts by various former students to paint a bleak picture of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at all levels, which brought Gazelle’s wife Jacqueline into the picture as well. This produced bitter responses from their son Didier, denying the allegations, protesting that ‘What was acceptable 50 years ago, is now considered as an offence’ and asking ‘Where is the limit between affection and sexual abuse?’ (Ian Pace, ‘Marcel Gazelle and the Culture of the Early Yehudi Menuhin School’, Desiring Progress, 7/5/13)

These new revelations was widely reported by all the leading UK newspapers (see in particular Victoria Ward, ‘Music school abuse scandal alleged to involve five top schools’, The Telegraph, 8/5/13, drawing upon some new information not broadcast by Channel 4), and also local and international press, and there followed a stream of further allegations, including Michal Kaznowski making more public his memories of Maurice Gendron (Paul Gallagher and Sanchez Manning, ‘Famous cellist was abusive monster, says former pupil’, The Independent, 9/5/13), the violinist Sacha Barlow speaking of inappropriate sexualised touching from the age of 12 by other members of staff at the school in the 1980s (Paul Gallagher, ‘Fresh abuse claims hit top music school’, The Independent, 12/5/13), and a former teacher at two (unspecified) specialist music schools, who had also spoken to Channel 4 News, talking of the ‘toxic’ atmosphere at the institutions, the attempted rape she suffered at the hands of one teacher, and the total lack of pastoral care at the places (Victoria Ward, ‘Teacher describes ‘toxic’ atmosphere at music schools’, The Telegraph, 9/5/13), also (for C4 News) urging against complacency that such abuse could not happen today. In this context, I elected to re-open the petition until the end of May (Alex Stevens, ‘Abuse in music schools: Petition reopens after new press coverage and MP’s support’, Classical Music Magazine, 10/5/13), and it has since received several hundred further signatories, and the backing of Lucy Powell, MP for Manchester Central.

On the day of broadcast of the Channel 4 News report, GMP made clear to Helen Pidd at The Guardian that as part of Operation Kiso they were investigating a whole 39 music school teachers from Manchester, of which 10 formed the nucleus of the operation, 12 were known through third-party referrals, another 12 were involved in activities which would probably not lead to criminal charges (in particular those who had sexual affairs with sixth-formers before 2003), and 5 were dead (Helen Pidd, ’39 Manchester music school teachers face inquiry’, The Guardian, 7/5/13). The very scale of the abuse being investigated was now becoming clearer to many.

By autumn 2013 four different teachers had been arrested – double-bassist Duncan McTier (who taught at the RNCM, but not at Chetham’s), violinist Wen Zhou Li (arrested in February 2013 right after the Brewer trial, at which time he was still teaching at Chetham’s), conductor Nicholas Smith (for offences against an underage girl in the 1970s) and violinist Malcolm Layfield (see above). McTier and Smith were charged in May 2014 (Helen Pidd, ‘Music teacher charged with indecent assaults’, The Guardian, 6/5/14; ‘World-renowned conductor charged with sexually assaulting Chetham pupil’, The Guardian, 27/5/14) and appeared in court in June (Helen Pidd, ‘Two musicians appear in court accused of sexually abusing music school pupils’, The Guardian, 13/6/14); McTier pleaded not guilty, whilst Smith did not enter a plea, but his solicitor indicated that he would be pleading not guilty. It was only at this stage that the Royal Academy of Music, where McTier now taught, decided to suspend him from his current job (not after his arrest the previous year). It was also revealed that McTier’s charges related not only to the RNCM but also to the Purcell School. It is anticipated that the trial will take place in the autumn of 2014. In January 2014, Greater Manchester Police indicated that they would seek the extradition of Chris Ling (Helen Pidd, ‘Police may seek extradition of US-based teacher accused of abusing pupils’, The Guardian, 6/1/14; James Tozer, ‘Violin teacher accused of sex abuse against female pupils at prestigious music college threatened with extradition proceedings so he can face trial in UK’, Daily Mail, 6/1/14); Layfield was charged with one count of rape in July 2014 (Helen Pidd, ‘Violin teacher charged with rape over alleged attack at Chetham’s school’, The Guardian, 29/7/14).

Further revelations came to light in 2014 about the knowledge of Moreland about earlier crimes after Paul Gallagher at the Independent was forwarded (by myself, with permission), letters from ex-pupils to Moreland (and also Gregson) in 2002 concerning the abuse they had suffered at the hands of Layfield. These heart-felt and distressing letters were met with stock replies of one or two sentences, just saying that current pastoral care systems meant this couldn’t happen again, rather than acknowledging any concern for the victims (Paul Gallagher, ‘Elite music school Chetham’s loses pupils in backlash at allegations of historic sexual abuse’, The Independent, 28/1/14). Moreland claimed in an self-justificatory interview published after the Independent article that she only heard about anything being wrong at the school in late 2011 (Richard Morrison, ‘Does Chetham’s have a future?’, The Times, 12/2/14).

By coincidence, the appearance of the Channel 4 News report come just before another devastating revelation following a sustained investigation by The Times and The Australian, concerning the late former Dean of Manchester Cathedral (1984-1993), Robert Waddington, about whom various former choristers had come forward to detail the sustained grooming, sexual abuse and sadistic beatings they had suffered at his hands, both in Manchester and when he had worked as a teacher in the 1960s and 1970s in Queensland (see Sean O’Neill, Michael McKenna and Amanda Gearing, ‘Archbishop in ‘cover-up’over abuse scandal’, ‘Accused cleric built reputation at small school in Australia’, and ‘Former Archbishop of York ‘covered up’ sex abuse scandal’, The Times, 10/5/13; Sean O’Neill, ‘Behind the story’ and ‘Victim of clergyman’s abuse was groomed as young chorister’, The Times, 10/5/13; Amanda Gearing, ‘Choirboy haunted by painful memories’, The Times, 10/5/13; Steve Doughty, ‘’I was the boyfriend of a monster’: Victim of paedophile priest speaks out as former Archbishop of York denies covering up child abuse claims’, Daily Mail, 10/5/13; Sean O’Neill,’ Church abuse suspect ‘investigated three times’, The Times, 11/5/13). Chetham’s School provides the majority of choristers for the cathedral and has other close links with the institution (I detailed this in Ian Pace, ‘Robert Waddington, Former Dean of Manchester Cathedral, and Chetham’s School of Music’, Desiring Progress, 12/5/13), and one former Chetham’s pupil soon came forward to detail his own abuse at the hands of Waddington (who was a close friend of headmaster John Vallins); it was also made public that Waddington had been on the board of governors for Chetham’s during his tenure as Dean, thus overlapping with the period of some of the worst abuse scandals alleged to have gone on at the school (Sean O’Neill, ‘Dean preyed on us during his reign at top music school, says former music pupil’ and ‘Dean was still preying on choirboys when Church ruled him too ill to be a risk’, The Times, 16/5/13; Paul Gallagher, ‘Former Dean accused of sex abuse was a governor at scandal-hit music school’, The Independent, 16/5/13; Michael McKenna and Amanda Gearing, ‘Accused cleric link to top music school abuse probe’, The Australian, 18/5/13). The coverage had focused on the culpability of the Church of England in covering up Waddington’s abuse; Chetham’s have not at the time of writing made any public comment about his involvement there other than to confirm his tenure as a governor.

A final complication was provided by the announcement of the abolition of the position of Director of Music at the Purcell School, thus rendering incumbent Quentin Poole redundant (see Norman Lebrecht, ‘Reports: Music School abolishes Head of Music post’, Slipped Disc, 12/5/13 and ‘Why Purcell is back in the headlights’, 14/5/13; both articles contain plentiful comments from individuals associated with the school). It is believed that this relates to a personal feud between the former Headmaster, Peter Crook and the Chairman of Governors. Crook fired the civil partner of Poole (about whom there have been suggestions of impropriety with pupils), and then after Crook’s own firing in 2011 (see earlier in this article), the Chairman fired Poole himself; but this all needs clarification in the face of many conflicting accounts.

Two further developments arising out of the Brewer trial have recently emerged. One is that the Cabinet Office’s honours forfeiture committee decided to strip Brewer of his OBE, awarded to him in late 1994; this forfeiture was announced on May 28th (Matt Chorley, ‘Exclusive: Paedophile choirmaster Michael Brewer whose victim killed herself is stripped of his OBE’, Daily Mail, 28/5/13; Christopher Hope, ‘Convicted child abuser Michael Brewer stripped of OBE by Queen’, The Telegraph, 28/5/13; Helen Pidd, ‘Former Chetham’s director Michael Brewer stripped of OBE’, The Guardian, 28/5/13). The following day, it was also announced that Brewer would appeal against the length of his sentence (‘Sex abuse choirmaster Michael Brewer in sentence appeal’, BBC News, 29/5/13; ‘Choirmaster jailed for sexually abusing pupil seeks to appeal against sentence’, The Guardian, 29/5/13; ‘Sex abuse Chethams teacher Michael Brewer in court bid to have sentence cut’, Manchester Evening News, 30/5/13).

A report was published on April 10th, 2014, by the Surrey Safeguarding Adults Board, into the suicide of Frances Andrade (Hilary Brown, ‘The death of Mrs A. A Serious Case Review’, Surrey County Council: Safeguarding Adults Board, see also the summary and press release). This report found much to be desired in the treatment of Andrade when she went to the police and during the proceedings, but also in particular had the following to say about musical education in general and the dangers therein:

Music schools, in common with other “hothousing” establishments, create pressures that may have a particularly damaging impact on young people who are vulnerable and/or without parental support. These settings are competitive, and feed into expectations already placed on the young person to be “special” and to succeed. The adults around them, who are often prominent performers in their own right, are invested with exceptional power and influence and are in a position of trust from which they exert considerable leverage over whether their pupils achieve success in their chosen fields. The music world is not alone in this regard, -similar pressures arise in elite sports academies, boarding schools, ballet schools, cathedral and choir schools, drama and performing arts courses, art schools and other areas of endeavour that create a backdrop for this very particular and potent form of grooming.

Chethams School provided an ideal environment for this kind of abuse to occur. The school seemed unaware of the risks of sexual abuse and it does not appear to have proactively promoted a child protection agenda. Boundaries were blurred and some staff seemed at times to act with impunity. When, Mrs A was sent, as a teenager, to live with MB and his family it was effectively a private fostering arrangement, put in place without any proper scrutiny or formal overview. The atmosphere of elite performance teaching created what one pupil described as a belief that you were “special”6 and it placed teachers in an exclusive and powerful position in relation to their protégés.

In response to this case another music teacher (MR), a man who had acted as a whistle-blower, published an article offering a window onto the culture in these circles at the time we are speaking of from which it can be seen that Mrs A was not alone in being at risk from abusive sexual relationships and unprofessional behaviour. MR later said,

Music lessons are one-to-one… So, if you’re determined to behave wrongly, there’s the opportunity: “It’s one of the easiest situations to abuse, I would have thought.”

He further discussed how music teaching in particular, takes place in a context of emotional intensity and that pupils’ crushes on staff are commonplace.

So this culture of sexualised behaviour between teachers and pupils that developed in the school at that time was, to some extent, known about and condoned. This culture may also have prevailed at the Royal Northern College of Music as there was considerable overlapping of staff, and this became the focus of contention specifically in relation to the appointment of ML to a senior post at the college. MR publicly confronted the principle of the college about the suitability of this appointment, given widespread allegations about ML’s sexual exploitation of young women students, at considerable cost to his career7. When he made his concerns public, he received many letters of support from students disclosing past abuses and concerns. Mrs A was one such pupil/student. When his whistle-blower’s warnings went unheeded, he recounted that

“Letters from pupils and professional musicians poured in, one was from [Mrs A] … She was a force to be reckoned with …”There was tremendous passion and anger.” Chethams therefore represented a very particular context in which it was possible for MB to target and groom Mrs A from a position of trust, power and influence. Although it seems to have been common knowledge that some teachers within the music network around Chethams and the Royal Northern Music School had sexual relationships with their pupils this was not formally addressed.

1. THIS REVIEW DID NOT HAVE A MANDATE TO COMMENT ON ISSUES OF CHILD PROTECTION BUT URGES CHILDREN’S SAFEGUARDING BOARDS AND THE INDEPENDENT SCHOOLS INSPECTORATE TO PAY ATTENTION TO ALL SCHOOLS ESPECIALLY, BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY, BOARDING SCHOOLS INCLUDING THOSE CONCERNED WITH “SPECIAL” PUPILS OR THOSE THAT HAVE ELITE STATUS. THIS INCLUDES SO CALLED “FREE” SCHOOLS THAT EXIST TO SOME EXTENT OUTSIDE OF LOCAL NETWORKS. (Brown, ‘The death of Mrs A’, pp. 8-10)

These view resembles that presented in my own article for the Times Educational Supplement (Ian Pace, ‘The culture of music education lends itself to abuse’, TES, 8/5/13).

Since the events of the first half of 2013, there have been a range of other cases in the news of musicians and music teachers involved with abuse. In September 2013, another female music teacher was convicted of abusing children, this time boys. Jennifer Philp-Parsons, the then 45-year-old former head of music at a Devon school, was found guilty of sexually abusing two 16-year old boys (within one hour of each other) at her marital home, after having also pleaded guilty to three charges of sexual activity with a male aged 13 to 17 while in a position of trust, during May to June of that year; one report unfortunately described her as having ‘seduced’ (rather than abused) the boys (John Hall, ‘Teacher jailed for alcohol-fuelled sex sessions with two teenage pupils at her home’, The Independent, September 19th, 2013). Philp-Parsons was jailed for two years and six months, placed on the sex offenders register, and made the subject of a sexual offences prevention order. Graphic descriptions were provided of grooming the boys so as to become their favourite teacher, how she would ply the boys with alcohol and then sexually exploit them, as well as texts between her and the boys, though the defence tried to claim she was devoted to the boys, and blame this on the failure of her marriage (Richard Smith, ‘Jennifer Philp-Parsons: Teacher jailed for alcohol-fuelled sex sessions with two teenage pupils’, The Mirror, September 19th, 2013) whilst police also suggested there might be further victims, and urged them to come forward (Luke Salkeld, ‘Music Teacher, 45, had sex with two male 16-year old pupils in her home during drunken party while her husband slept upstairs’, Daily Mail, September 19th, 2013).

One of the most serious cases to come to light in recent times is historic, that of Alan Doggett, conductor and composer who was closely associated with Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, and conducted the first performances of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar, about whom I have written at length (Ian Pace, ‘UPDATED: Alan Doggett, first conductor of Joseph and Jesus Christ Superstar, and the Paedophile Information Exchange’, Desiring Progress, 28/3/14). Over a dozen former pupils at Colet Court School in London (prep school for St Paul’s) have testified to Doggett’s abuse of boys aged as young as 10, sometimes in front of others (raping boys in dormitories), regular sexual touching of genitals of almost all boys, and even a form of child prostitution whereby they would be paid for allowing Doggett to use them. Doggett also taught at City of London School for Boys, St Mary’s School for Girls and Culford School, as well as running the London Boy Singers, a group of around 1000 boys drawn from schools all over London, before committing suicide in 1978 when facing molestation charges against a boy. There are many further allegations of abuse at some of these institutions. Since my own work and pioneering articles by Andrew Norfolk at The Times, a whole police investigation, Operation Winthorpe, has been set up to look at a mass of allegations at both Colet Court and St Paul’s (though I have been informed that Doggett is no longer part of the investigation) (Andrew Norfolk, ‘Teachers ‘abused boys at Osborne’s old school”, The Times, 25/3/14; ‘The teacher sat us on his lap until his face went very red’, The Times, 25/3/14; ‘Friends to stars had easy access to boys’, The Times, 25/3/14; ‘Boys punished for telling of abuse by teacher’, The Times, 28/3/14; ‘Police look into ‘decades of abuse’ at top school’, The Times, 9/4/14; ‘Abuse claims against 18 teachers by ex-pupils at top public school; St Paul’s co-operates with police inquiry led by head of Savile investigation’, The Times, 1/5/14; ‘Accused teacher kept on working for 24 years’, The Times, 1/5/14; ‘Teacher kept job for 16 years after pupils found sex tapes’, The Times, 20/5/14; ‘Colet Court and St Paul’s: a culture of child abuse’, The Times, 20/5/14. See also Benjamin Ross, ‘My Sadist Teachers at St Paul’s Prep School Betrayed a Generation’, Daily Mail, 1/6/14); at the time of writing, there have been seven arrests to date (‘Man arrested on suspicion of sexual assault at St Paul’s school’, The Guardian, 1/8/14).

In connection with investigations into Home Office funding for the Paedophile Information Exchange, the former civil servant Clifford Hindley, also a musicologist who wrote about the operas of Benjamin Britten, was named as the individual who had ensured such funding went ahead (Keir Mudie and Nick Dorman, ‘Huge sums of TAXPAYER’S cash ‘handed to vile child-sex pervert group’ by Home Office officials’, Sunday People, 1/3/14; see also David Hencke, ‘Revealed: The civil servant in the Home Office’s PIE funding inquiry and his academic articles on boy love’, 1/3/14). I wrote an extended piece analysing how deeply paedophile themes ran through many of Hindley’s writings on both Britten and Ancient Greece (Ian Pace, ‘Clifford Hindley: Pederasty and Scholarship’, Desiring Progress, 3/3/14).

The pianist and composer Ian Lake was revealed to have been a serial abuser of both boys (as young as 10) and girls at Watford School of Music and the Royal College of Music (RCM) (Paul Gallagher, ‘Decades of abuse by Royal College of Music piano teacher Ian Lake boosts demands for inquiry’, The Independent, 29/12/13). Lake had received a little-reported conviction for a sexual offence (of which details remain hazy) in 1995. One of his RCM victims spoke of telling the then principal, Michael Gough Matthews (Principal from 1985 to 1993, died in 2012), and whilst she was given a change of teacher, nothing else happened, so Lake was free to do the same to others. This type of process has been described by multiple victims at different institutions (including, for example, victims of Ryszard Bakst at the Royal Northern College of Music). Matthews’ successor as Principal, Dame Janet Ritterman, who was Principal at the RCM at the time when Lake was convicted (and is now Chancellor of Middlesex University), has been contacted for comment about what was known about Lake, but has declined to respond. Another late teacher at the RCM, Hervey Alan, was identified as having attempted a sexual assault on a student; again, when she complained, she received a change of teacher, but no further action was taken (Paul Gallagher, ‘Royal College of Music hit by more sex abuse allegations’, The Independent, 10/1/14). Furthermore, the victim (who was also a student of Lake’s on the piano) underwent a second attempted assault from a college porter, about which nothing was done after she complained. This woman has also detailed the ways in which not being prepared to respond to sexual advances in the professional world could hinder one’s career, a story which is all too familiar, and needs to be considered seriously alongside all the other dimensions to this issue. I have argued for a while that the granting of unchecked power to prominent musicians, administrators, and fixers almost invites the corruption of such power, and more, rather than less, state intervention is needed to ensure that proper employment practices are observed in a freelance world. Many musicians would hate this, for sure, and claim it represented an unwarranted intrusion by government into a field which should be driven by ‘purely musical’ concerns, but in my view the latter serve as a smokescreen for cynical and callous power games.

Robin Zebaida, pianist and examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM, responsible for the ‘grade’ exams that many young musicians take) since 1998, was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year old girl at the same time as he was seducing her mother; Zebaida received a two-year conditional discharge, was made to sign the sex offenders register for two years, and pay a £15 victim surcharge. The trial heard of romantic evenings with plentiful alcohol with Zebaida kissing the mother whilst groping the daughter; Zebaida would also claim he touched the daughter lightly on account of back problems she suffered following a car crash which had killed her father and brother (‘Concert pianist fondled girl of 15 while kissing her mother, court told’, The Telegraph, 21/11/13; Jennifer Smith, ‘Oxford-educated concert pianist ‘French kissed fan on his sofa while simultaneously fondling her 15-year-old daughter’, Daily Mail, 21/11/13; Hayley Dixon, ‘Concert pianist denies fondling girl, 15, while kissing mother’, The Telegraph, 26/11/13; Lucy Crossley, ‘Internationally renowned concert pianist found guilty of groping a 15-year-old while French-kissing her mother’, Daily Mail, 2/12/13; ‘Pianist guilty of sex assault on teenager’, The Telegraph, 3/12/13). I am not aware of the ABRSM having made any comment, but gather that Zebaida’s nature was well-known to others (private communications from an examiner).

In November 2013, Philip Evans, music teacher at the private King Edward’s School, Edgbaston, Birmingham (which dates from 1552 and was set up by Edward VI), pleaded guilty to seven sexual assaults, ten charges of making indecent photographs of children, and six counts of voyeurism; more than 400 000 indecent images were found on his computer (Teacher Admits Sexual Assault’, Press Association, 28/11/13). The trial found that Evans, who had also acted as an RAF ‘leader’ in the school’s Combined Cadet Force, had abused teenage boys whilst pretending to measure them for their school uniforms, and installed high tech equipment in changing rooms and showers to film pupils. Evans was sentenced in December to three years and eight months imprisonment (‘Paedophile music teacher jailed’, Evening Standard, 20/12/13; Jonny Greatrex, ‘Music teacher jailed for sexually abusing teenage pupils while pretending to measure them for uniforms’, Daily Mirror, 21/12/13; ‘Music teacher who rigged up hidden camera to film himself sexually abusing boys has been jailed’, Daily Mail, 20/12/13).

In February 2014, the early music conductor and former Guildhall School teacher Philip Pickett was charged with eight counts of indecent assault, three counts of rape, two counts of false imprisonment, one count of assault and one count of attempted rape (see the press release from City of London Police reproduced at Ian Pace, ‘Philip Pickett arrested on 15 charges, and interview with Clare Moreland in The Times’). Quite incredibly, Pickett’s trial was allowed to be postponed from October 2014 to January 2015 so that he could finish touring. Defence barrister Jonathan Barnard said at the Old Bailey ‘My client is a world famous musician and therefore earns his living on a job to job basis and has tours across the globe throughout the autumn – but the season slows down in the new year’. The Crown agreed on the grounds that ‘the allegations are at the latest 20 years old and the earliest, 40 years old’ (Ben Wilkinson, ‘Musician’s historic sex crimes trial put on hold’, Oxford Mail, 18/3/14).

Then in March 2014, an 18-year old oboist, Robin Brandon-Turner appeared in court on charges of making a girl perform oral sexual upon him when she was aged between 6 and 10 (and he was between 13 and 17); Brandon-Turner said he was just ‘experimenting’ at the time (‘Young musician Robin Brandon-Turner admits sex abuse’, BBC News, 17/3/14). He was given a two year probationary sentence in June 2014 at the High Court in Edinburgh, and ordered to attend a programme to address his behaviour (‘Sex abuse young musician Robin Brandon-Turner sentenced’, BBC News, 16/6/14).

On the basis of all the many published articles and reports, and also the wide range of information communicated to me privately, I have been able to surmise the following situation for the various schools and colleges, which has been presented to various politicians involved in abuse campaigning. It would not be appropriate to reproduce this here, but some other issues can be addressed.

Psychological and emotional abuse is believed by many to be rampant in the profession throughout education and elsewhere (Definitions are difficult in this context, as various studies have indicated. See in particular Kieran O’Hagan, Emotional and Psychological Abuse of Children (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1992), pp. 18-35, and O’Hagan, Identifying Emotional and Psychological Abuse: A Guide for Childcare Professionals (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), pp. 27-40, in the latter of which several writers are cited on a preference for the term ‘psychological maltreatment’ (p. 30). The definitions examined here definitely encompass the types of abuse which can be identified within musical education. This subject is definitely in need of wider research in a musical context). To give just one of many examples of how this has been reported by many: a teacher looks to reduce a vulnerable student to tears at the beginning of most of their instrumental lessons, thus enabling them to take the student on their knee or otherwise physically comfort them. They aim to destroy the student’s fragile confidence and sense of identity and remake them in their own image. This can be a prelude to sexual abuse or simply a strategy for control and domination.

Why Focus Specifically on Musical Education?

Sexual and other abuse have been discovered – and in various cases the perpetrators dismissed, banned from working with children and/or faced criminal convictions – in many fields of life. However, there are reasons why its manifestation in musical education deserves special individual treatment. My own article, written in February 2013 and published in May in the Times Educational Supplement, on why those studying music might be particularly vulnerable to abuse, is included at the end of this article. A recurrent issue for many commentators has been that of one-to-one tuition and the power accorded to individual teachers to dominate students who are utterly at their behest (see Britten and Dominiczak, ‘Violinist’s suicide could stop abuse victims coming forward’; Tweedie, Britten and Schute, ‘Frances Andrade: A culture of abuse, denial and cover-up’; Jonathan West, ‘Sexual abuse at music schools’, 2/3/13; Pidd, Ibbotson and Carroll, ‘A musical hothouse in which ‘Ling’s strings’ say they fell prey to abuse’. Some rather crude sub-editing made an interview with RNCM principal Linda Merrick – Helen Pidd, ‘One-to-one music tuition ‘may be abolished”, The Guardian, 1/3/13 – characterise Merrick’s views in a simplistic fashion. Merrick merely argued that this mode of teaching might be looked at again, as I argue in ‘Q & A: Ian Pace’, Classical Music); this type of teaching is significantly more prevalent in musical education than elsewhere.

The classical music profession is highly competitive and often highly aggressive as many people jostle for a relatively small amount of available work. This fact is often mobilised in order to justify cruel treatment of young musicians, maintaining that they require such treatment in order to be ‘toughened up’ for the demands of a professional career. The effects upon those who do not succeed can and have been devastating.

Classical music depends upon a large degree of state money in order to function, yet there is little in the way of wider state intervention in the workings of the profession – because of the dangers especially in education but more widely in terms of abuse and maltreatment of adult musicians, I argue that the ‘hands-off’ approach of the Arts Council may no longer be most appropriate. When it is possible for some powerful musicians to build their own fiefdoms, and use the fact of their holding such power to dictate that others may have to sleep with them or artificially please them in other ways, there is immense potential for corruption. A state-subsidised world featuring individuals reigning over unchecked power must be reconsidered.

Whilst the UK conservatoires have their roots in the nineteenth century, and in particular the move towards a degree of professionalization of musical education in the last few decades of that century, when most of those schools were either founded or began to move towards their modern form, the five specialist music schools were all founded between 1962 and 1972, and so are a recent phenomenon. Whilst the first two of these – the Purcell School (previously the Central Tutorial School for Young Musicians) (founded 1962), and the Yehudi Menuhin School (founded 1963) – were essentially created ‘from scratch’ to provide a more intensive level of musical education from a young age, the remaining three – Chetham’s (founded as a music school in 1969), Wells (music school section founded 1970), and St Mary’s (founded as a music school in 1972) all had existing choir schools prior to taking on their specialist music form. Furthermore, both the Menuhin School and St Mary’s in particular (the latter of which was viewed by Menuhin as a sister school in Scotland to his own institution) drew inspiration from existing models of specialist music tuition as provided in the Soviet Union – during a time at the height of the Cold War, in which this country was dedicated to the production of soloists who would win international competitions (following the shock provided by the victory of American pianist Van Cliburn in the 1958 Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow), in such a way that all other considerations were secondary . How these various aspects of the schools’ pedagogical history and roots affected their development – permitting widespread psychological abuse and much sexual abuse, the latter arguably an extension of the former – requires comprehensive and detailed scrutiny by experts. It is worth pointing out in this context the fact of a huge sexual abuse scandal affecting the Central Music School in Moscow (founded 1932, and in some ways the major model for future secondary specialist music education), in which pianist Anatoly Ryabov was accused of abusing 53 different girls, many of them aged 12 or 13, between 1987 and 2011. When the case came to court, the children and their mothers were blamed for over-ambition and destroying the school’s legendary reputation, and seducing a venerable teacher, whilst Ryabov was portrayed in the press as if fighting Putin’s regime, and much of the Moscow musical establishment swung behind him. All of the charges were thrown out and Ryabov found not guilty (information provided to me by one individual closely involved with the trial).

The last relatively comprehensive study of musical education in the UK was undertaken in 1978, commissioned by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (Training Musicians: A Report to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation on the training of professional musicians (London: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, 1978)), when many of the specialist music schools were still in a state of relative infancy. Nothing was mentioned in this about the dangers of abuse in such institutions, though their role in terms of producing professional musicians remains a consideration throughout. It is now high time, after 35 years, for a new report, more detailed and sophisticated in its methodology than before, to be produced as the outcome of an inquiry. The specialist music schools in particular have inhabited a nebulous and secretive world with insufficient external scrutiny, despite being in receipt of a considerable amount of state money.

Networks

In spite of all of the above, various individuals who have been investigating abuse in musical education remain wary or sceptical about positing the existence of a ‘ring’. It would probably be more accurate to refer to large overlapping networks of individuals frequently complicit in facilitating or covering up each other’s actions, rather than something more centrally organised.

Examples of the connections involved include the fact of teachers frequently moving between multiple institutions. Many also teach on summer courses or are involved with orchestral and choral coaching. There are especially intricate networks connecting both former and current staff at Chetham’s in particular.

Factors deterring students from coming forward

There are many factors mitigating against students or former students from coming forward either to the police or the media about experiences of abuse. These include the factor of peer pressure and the strong potential for ostracisation by alumni communities, fears for professional reputation, and minimisation or trivialisation of the issue of psychological abuse. Arguments have also been made about how uncovering of abuse this will hurt funding for classical music at a time when it is most vulnerable (see, for example, Richard Morrison, ‘Music teaching’s dark past is in danger of destroying its future’, BBC Music Magazine, April 2013, p. 25 and for a more fervent expression of this, Denis Joe, ‘Don’t let abuse fears ruin music: A Savile-style inquiry into one of the UK’s top music schools could wreck the informality essential to music tuition’, Spiked Online, 7/3/13). Others have attacked those who have come forward concerning ‘historic’ abuse at institutions on the grounds that revelations of such experiences have a harmful effect upon those studying at the institutions today (this has been a recurrent complaint by many current parents and pupils posting to Norman Lebrecht’s blog). Knowledge of the experiences of Frances Andrade in court also gives fear to those who might have to undergo a similar experience. Furthermore, some of the abuse would not at the time have constituted a criminal act, if consensual, and with victims over the age of 16 prior to 2003.

The difficulties of coming forward are exacerbated for younger victims – it is well-known and often commented how many abuse victims wait several decades before deciding to speak out (See, for example, Connie Burrows Horton and Tracy K. Cruise, Child Abuse and Neglect: The Schools’ Response (New York: The Guilford Press, 2001), pp. 39-40; Thomas G. Plante and Kathleen L. McChesney, Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church: A Decade of Crisis, 2002-2012 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), p. 20; David Gray and Peter Watt, Giving Victims a Voice: joint report into sexual allegations made against Jimmy Savile (London: NSPCC, 2013), p. 20; Kathryn Westcott and Tom de Castella, ‘The decades-long shadow of abuse’, BBC News Magazine, 25/10/12). This very fact unfortunately likely plays a fact in the widespread perception in amongst the music world (and propagated by those managing its institutions) that abuse is primarily ‘historic’, belonging to a more distant era. That this may simply be the result of the fact that victims of more recent abuse do not yet feel ready to speak out should not be discounted. Furthermore, musicians in their 20s and 30s tend to have more precarious careers (unless hugely successful), and are more vulnerable to hostile criticism, whether made explicit or not, such as might come about as a result of their taking their complaints forward. It should be borne in mind that as the professional world of classical music is relatively small and many individuals are closely connected through shared professional and educational experiences, there can be especially great difficulties in victims maintaining anonymity if they go forward, on account of easy spread of gossip and relative ease of identifying them.

Conclusion: Issues for an Inquiry

between 1945 and 1989 only four public inquiries were held into institutional abuse. These were the Court Lees inquiry (1967) into excessive use of corporal punishment at Court Less approved school in Surrey, the Leesway Children’s Home inquiry (1985) following offences of indecency involving the taking of photographs of children, the Kincora Boy’s Home, Belfast, inquiry (1986), following suggestions of a paedophile ring operative at the institution, and the Melanie Klein House inquiry (1988) into the use of restraints upon older girls in an establishment managed by Greenwich Social Services Department (see Brian Corby, Alan Doig & Vicki Roberts, Public Inquiries into Abuse of Children in Residential Care (London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001), pp. 79-81 for an overview of these four inquiries). Numerous other inquiries have followed since the 1990s, and the sexual abuse of children began to feature more prominently (one study suggests that the inquiries in the mid-1980s viewed sexual abuse in institution as part of a ‘bad apple’ syndrome (ibid. p. 83)). Most relevant to this amongst the post-1989 inquiries include the following:

(a) Scotforth House Residential School (1992), involving the physical abuse of children with learning difficulties;
(b) Castle Hill Residential School, Shropshire (1993) – sexual abuse of pupils by head of the school
(c) Oxendon House (1994) – inappropriate restraint and therapy techniques used by staff on older children with emotional and behavioural problems
(d) Islington: community homes, (1995) – concerns about risks to children from staff with previous child abuse convictions (see the charts of inquiries in Corby et al, Public Inquiries into Abuse of Children, pp. 77-78).

Other prominent inquiries from this period, including the Waterhouse Inquiry into abuse in children’s homes in North Wales (2000), can fairly be considered to be of a different nature to that requested here.

The Castle Hill Inquiry pinpointed the extent to which the abusing headmaster, Ralph Morris, was a ‘charismatic leader of the school who was very much in control of the environment’, how the particularities of the boys (who exhibited educational and behavioural problems) led to their not being trusted to be able to tell the truth, and called for independent schools to be brought more under the purview of authorities in order that allegations of abuse can be seen in their entirety and appropriately responses made (Corby et al, Public Inquiries into Abuse of Children, p. 84).

But also relevant in some respects as a model for an inquiry into abuse in musical education would be the ongoing Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry set up by the Northern Ireland Executive (http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/historical-institutional-abuse (accessed 28/5/13)). Noted in particular are the following:

• The “Acknowledgement Forum” allows people to contribute their experiences without any of the stress of having to appear on a witness stand. All info to be collated into a report, and records destroyed after the Inquiry ends.
• The “Statutory Inquiry” is more public and involves questioning, but not agressive cross-examination (and names cannot be published by the press). They have the legal authority to force institutions to release documents or appear for questioning if needed.

This may be a good model for the workings of an inquiry into abuse in musical education.

Issues which a public inquiry might address would include the following:

• The extent and nature of abuse of all types in specialist music education, providing opportunities for victims past and present to achieve some type of closure and be heard.
• The historical roots of secondary specialist music education since the foundation of the five schools between 1962 and 1972, and the models in terms of pedagogy and child welfare upon which they drew.
• The nature of psychological and emotional abuse and the dangers of its occurrence in musical education.
• The nature of regulation and safeguarding and how this affects independent schools who receive state money through the Music and Dance scheme. Proposals for the extent to which these schools might be brought in line with other state institutions.
• Requirements in terms of formal training for instrumental teachers.
• Only a minority of students will likely attain professional careers – potential for serious damage to those who don’t, who have devoted their all to becoming a musician.
• Guru teachers and their webs of control – charismatic cults and their effects upon pedagogy.
• Questions about whether the central focus of exclusive 1-1 teaching remains appropriate.
• The culture of classical music and the exploitation of unaccountable power towards those whose careers and livelihoods are always vulnerable. The extension of such a culture and its values into musical education.
• The tendency of musical institutions to insulate themselves from the wider world and normal demands in terms of humane treatment of those they nurture.
• That there is a sexual component to music (and musical performance) could not be plausibly denied– but how is this to be handled when teaching young musicians?

It is clear that there is abundant evidence pointing to widespread abuse within musical education. Some of this may be able to be addressed via criminal proceedings, but as indicated elsewhere, there are various factors deterring victims from speaking out; furthermore various forms of abuse do not constitute criminal activity (where the victim was between 16 and 18 prior to the 2003 Sexual Offences Act, or where psychological maltreatment is involved) or cannot be prosecuted because the perpetrator is now dead. Some police involved with criminal investigations such as Operation Kiso have made clear to the author that institutional culpability and the structural workings of institutions such as facilitate abuse are beyond their remit. And the institutions of musical education have not been subject to sustained investigation and scrutiny for a long time, despite being the recipient of state monies; wider issues of pedagogical approach and its relationship to child welfare in such contexts are greatly needed. It is for these reasons that it is believed that a public inquiry should be undertaken as soon as possible into musical education and the potential therein for abuse.

Appendix: Article by Ian Pace for Times Educational Supplement, published online 8/5/13

The culture of music education lends itself to abuse

Ian Pace studied piano, composition and percussion at Chetham’s School of Music from 1978 to 1986, followed by Oxford and Cardiff universities and the Juilliard School in New York. He has a dual career as concert pianist and historical musicologist, and is lecturer in music and head of performance at City University London. He writes here in a personal capacity.

My own formative years, between ages 10 and 18, were spent at Chetham’s – better known as Chet’s – from 1978 to 1986, always as a boarder.

I should make clear from the beginning that I do not consider myself to have been a victim of sustained abuse at the school. I received a good deal of valuable teaching that helped towards my professional career as a pianist and musicologist. However, the recent conviction of one teacher and the police investigation of many others have forced me to re-evaluate those times, the values I encountered and absorbed there, and their relationship to a wider classical music culture.

Many among the alumni have come together in recent months, often for the first time in several decades, and frequently with the help of social media. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the conviction of one teacher and allegations against others have been traumatic for many. They have led to varying degrees of disillusionment, regret, sometimes denial or disbelief. There have been attempts to recapture the most positive elements of the past as an antidote to these shocks.

Hardest of all to accept can be the idea that those who played an integral part in shaping one’s own musical identity and development – a deeply personal thing – may have themselves been deeply corrupted individuals responsible for sometimes heinous acts. An almost frantic piecing together of memories from the time can also give cause for sober reflection upon some aspects of the culture of the school.

In particular, there was the relatively common knowledge of affairs between (mostly male) teachers and (mostly female) students, the latter in most cases were over 16, but still students nonetheless. What sort of distorted values were at play when this was apparently not viewed as anything particularly unusual or untoward? From a youthful perspective, this seemed to bestow a certain status upon some of those involved (occasionally boys as well as girls) perceived as especially adult, sexually mature and sophisticated, despite still being children.

Many of the values and attitudes informing classical music today remain rooted in the 19th century. Among these is the idea that solo performance entails a highly intimate expression of the self, dealing with deeply intimate emotions. Or that it entails a seduction, captivation and bewitchment of one’s audience, which can objectify performer and listener alike. Both place the musician in a vulnerable situation that can be withstood from the vantage point of adult emotional and sexual maturity, but that is extremely testing and potentially dangerous for children.

And the focus of attention is not merely upon the sounds produced but also the visual appearance of the performer, their demeanour, gestures and facial expression. The outfits female musicians (and increasingly males as well) are expected to wear are often highly sexualised.

It would be disingenuous to deny that teenagers of all types, not just musicians, look to older, sexualised role models for inspiration, but when this becomes ingrained within their education itself, it can be ripe for exploitation. When music teachers take it upon themselves to mould not only the musician but the whole person of the young performer, that performer may be at risk of seriously damaging consequences if this is not handled with the utmost care. Most obviously alarming is the possibility of sexualised grooming, as is alleged to have happened in many cases at Chetham’s.

But wider patterns of psychological abuse can equally have devastating results upon students’ personal and emotional well-being, with severe consequences in later life. Behind the sometimes monstrous egos of successful solo musicians you frequently find common traits of narcissistic self-obsession, narrowness of outlook, ruthless competitiveness, vanity and the insatiable need for reassurance. They are all frequently conceived as aspects of “artistic temperament”. Their higher calling seems to exempt them from other laws of reasonable behaviour.

Historical examples of musical “great men” such as Beethoven, Liszt or Wagner serve to legitimise these attitudes and traits. Many conflict sharply with the empathy, humility and generosity of spirit that I believe to be vital for productive teaching.

Yet many musicians are engaged as teachers primarily on the basis of their achievements as performers, and the result can at worst be disastrous. It can lead to the cultivation of entourages of adoring young students to be moulded into quasi-clones of the great guru, as extensions of his or her ego. Sometimes, students who do not conform to these teachers’ expectations can be the subject of jealous resentment leading to callous cruelty through attempts to destroy their confidence. They dissect and amplify the student’s every fault while ignoring their strengths, sometimes in order to humiliate them in front of others.

In either case this constitutes psychological abuse in a way that would be completely unacceptable for a regular state school teacher. But institutions’ reputations are often founded on these “great musicians” and they have the power to make or break a student’s future career. Students’ desperation to please has for too long been allowed to mask a pattern of abusive behaviour.

Reported Cases of Abuse in Musical Education, 1990-2012, and Issues for a Public Inquiry

Posted: December 30, 2013 | Author: Ian Pace | Filed under: Abuse, Chetham's, Music - General, Musical Education, Specialist Music Schools, Yehudi Menuhin School | Tags: adrian stark, brian davey, chetham's, child abuse, chris ling, Christopher barnett, craig edward johnson, David sanger, helen goddard, ian lake, john baxter, john smith, Jonathan rees-williams, martin roscoe, Michael Crombie, music school abuse, paul edmunds, peter lissauer, purcell school, robert king, ryzsard bakst, st mary's music school, wells cathedral school, yehudi menuhin school | 26 Comments

Historians of child abuse have pointed out that public awareness of the issue can be dated back at least as far as the Victorian era, through the efforts of child protection groups from this time, though many for some time imagined this began in Britain roughly at the beginning of the 1980s (see Brian Corby, Child Abuse: Towards a Knowledge Base, third edition (Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2006), pp. 8, 20 for some references to work of this type, and their links to different constructions of ‘childhood’). It is probably simplistic merely to imagine that such abuse is simply a phenomenon which has occurred with equal or greater frequency in historical times, the only differentiating factor of today being the extent to which it is reported both to the authorities and in the media (see ibid. pp. 8-21 for a variety of evidence suggesting that treatment of children has varied in numerous respects during different historical periods, and in particular earlier attempts at child protection). The passing of the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Act in 1889, followed by further consolidating acts in 1894, 1904 and 1908, as well as the formation of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, brought an intensified focus on mistreatment of children in the family, though a greater amount of attention continued to be paid to child prostitution. But attention to abuse in the family grew during the post-1945 period following the reports of the Curtis Committee and the 1952 Children and Young Persons (Amendment) Act, which created new powers for children’s departments to intervene in cases where children seemed in danger. Whilst medical literature identifying symptoms of abuse increased from the 1960s onwards, the primary catalyst for a greater sense of urgency from both politicians and the wider public was the case of Maria Colwell, killed by her stepfather in 1973, after various health and welfare officers failed to identify her predicament earlier (ibid. pp. 26-38). An important study by Nigel Parton traced the change in media reporting of the subject following in particular the setting up of an enquiry by Minister for Social Services Sir Keith Joseph, the new role allocated to the Department of Health and Social Security, the 1975 Children’s Act, and the establishment of ‘non-accidental injury’ as a new form of conceptualisation (Nigel Parton, ‘The Natural History of Child Abuse: A Study in Social Problem Definition’, British Journal of Social Work Vol. 9, No. 4 (1979), pp. 431-451).

But the focus remained upon the home and especially those homes associated with social deprivation (reflecting Joseph’s wider perception of a clear association between poverty and moral decline). This emphasis continued through the 1980s, including in such prominent inquiries as that into the death of Jasmine Beckford in 1984, or the Cleveland child abuse scandal in 1987, which brought false diagnosis of abuse into the public arena, leading to the rather ambivalent Children Act of 1989 (Corby, Child Abuse, pp. 42-49). Only four inquiries between 1945 and 1989 dealt with institutional abuse (Brian Corby, ‘The costs and benefits of the North Wales Tribunal of Inquiry’, in Nicky Stanley and Jill Manthorpe (eds), The Age of Inquiry: Learning and Blaming in Health and Social Care (London & New York: Routledge, 2004), p. 116). Since 1989 there have been a wider range of such inquiries and some wider public appreciation of institutional danger, though this has been focused upon children’s and care homes rather than so much upon independent schools (see the final section of this article for one example of a focus on the latter, at Castle Hill). It is however at this point in time that the issue of abuse in specialist music schools first came to public attention.

Since around 1990, there have been sporadic reports about abuse in music education, which have come to a head this year. One of the first such occasions was brought about following the move to America in the Summer of 1990 by Christopher Ling, violin teacher at Chetham’s School of Music (1985-1990), taking with him a group of his female students (see ‘Music Girls’ Maestro in Sex Probe: Scandal at top school’, The People, 3/3/91). Ling would never (to date) return to the UK; following his departure, revelations began to emerge of widespread sexual abuse of students at the school by Ling, which had been rumoured for a time. A police investigation was set up at the time, the course and results of which remain obscure; the school also took no further action nor made any statements, but the Ling affair was widely discussed amongst musicians, many of whom remembered it as one of the school’s darkest secrets. There were also two important resignations from Chetham’s, neither of which were reported. In December 1994, the long-serving Director of Music (since 1975), Michael Brewer, resigned apparently on grounds of ill health. As would be revealed in Brewer’s trial, this reason was a fabrication. Furthermore, another long-serving member of staff, the prestigious Polish piano teacher Ryszard Bakst, who had also taught at the Royal Northern College of Music, left in 1995. Bakst, who left Poland for the UK in 1968, taught at the RNCM for a whole 23 years, from 1969 to 1992; his teaching at Chetham’s began at some point in the 1970s (see ‘Ryszard Bakst’, at http://en.chopin.nifc.pl/chopin/persons/text/id/1603/lang/en (accessed 27/5/13)). To be chosen to study with Bakst was widely regarded in the school as the highest accolade for pianists; furthermore, several of Bakst’s own former students were members of the faculty, including two figures who at various points held the role of Head of the Keyboard Department. Bakst would die in 1999 at the age of 72. Another Chetham’s teacher who left the school but also continued to teach at the RNCM (like Bakst) was violinist Malcolm Layfield. Also in 1995, the pianist and long-term professor at the Royal College of Music, Ian Lake, was convicted of sexual offences, though this was not-widely reported. The specific nature of the conviction and the sentencing are not clear to the author, though it is known that Lake was able to continue performing soon afterwards (see my other blog post on Lake). Lake had also committed abuse against at least one boy at the Watford School of Music where he taught in the 1970s (Private communications from the victim to myself).

In 1996, a new story emerged in which two parents of children at Wells Cathedral School complained about bullying and improper sexual remarks by two teachers, leading to a child protection inquiry by police and social services. The complaints were said to have included allegations that one of the teachers encouraged teenage girls to sit on his knee during lessons in his private room (Geoffrey Gibbs, ‘Police Inquiry on Sex Claims at Top Private School’, The Guardian, 26/11/96; Mark Clough, ‘Teacher’s Actions Inquiry’, Western Morning News, 26/11/96). This had come on the back of another story about the school from the previous month, in which 53-year old religious education teacher James Hobson had bombarded a colleague, music teacher Julie Wood, non-stop with nuisance calls and letters for almost two weeks after the break-up of their relationships, leading to Hobson’s resigning his post (Sydney Young, ‘Jilted Sir’s 913 Calls to Ex-Lover’, The Mirror, 30/10/96; Emma Wilkins, ‘RE teacher cautioned over 900 calls to ex-lover’, The Times, 30/10/96; ‘Phone pest quits school’, The Times, 5/11/96). Following the new allegations of impropriety towards pupils, the school immediately issued a statement claiming that the cases had been thoroughly investigated more than a year ago and found to be without substance, and the then Headmaster John Baxter stressed how the school had been ‘inundated with messages and letters of support from parents, staff, past pupils and members of the community’ (‘School has Hotline for Parents’, Western Morning News, 27/11/96). (a situation which would later recur with respect to Chetham’s). By early January 1997, police closed the case, with a DS Salisbury saying that they had the allegations had been investigated ‘very thoroughly’, and they had decided that there will be no further action. Apart from that I don’t wish to say any more’ (‘Abuse at School Ruled Out’, Western Morning News, 9/1/97). The then Dean of Wells, The Very Rev Richard Lewis, issued a denunciatory statement against the parents as ‘persons with fevered imaginations, malevolent spirit and malicious intent’, and talked of how ‘This has been going on for a long time, and indeed one of these persons wrote to me and the headmaster promising to cause mischief’, and threatened legal action; it would also transpire that neither teacher had been suspended during the inquiry, and the children at the centre of the complaints were apparently not the parents’ own (who they withdrew from the school) (David Charter, ‘School may sue parents over sex claims about staff’, The Times, 13/1/97; Mark Clough, ‘School may press home inquiry’s all clear’, Western Morning News, 14/1/97; Geoffrey Gibbs, ‘School may sue sex claim parents’, The Guardian, 14/1/97). Soon afterwards, though the idea of legal action was quickly dropped (‘Cathedral School drops Legal Route’, Western Morning News, 25/1/97).

Also in 1996, Christopher Barnett, the founder and musical director of the Suffolk-based Wenhaston Boy’s Choir, which had Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber as its patron, and had performed at the Vatican and the White House, was found dead on the foreshore of the Orwell at Wherstead, near Ipswich, a well-known suicide spot. It was confirmed by Suffolk police that Barnett, who gave singing lessons at two schools, was on police bail pending further inquiries into the abuse of a boy (‘Dead choirmaster faced sex charge’, Daily Mail, 10/9/96).

In 1998, Craig Edward Johnson, a housemaster at the Yehudi Menuhin School (who had worked at the school for 11 years), was sentenced to 120 hours community service and ordered to pay towards court costs (just £60) after being convicted at Redhill Magistrates’ Court possession of indecent images of children. He immediately resigned his position at the Menuhin School and had to register with his local police in Brighton as a paedophile. Anonymous letters had been sent to both the headmaster of the Menuhin School and Leatherhead police, accusing Mr Johnson of being homosexual with a predilection for young males, and calling it a scandal that he was teaching at the school (‘Housemaster kept indecent photographs of young boys’, GetSurrey, 23/1/98).

In August of the previous year, however, Adrian Stark, director of music at St John’s School, Leatherhead, Surrey had been found dead off Beachy Head (‘Body in sea thought to be child porn teacher’, The Independent, 3/8/97; ‘Teacher on porn charge found in sea’, The Times, 4/8/97), after three public schools had been raided by Scotland Yard detectives investigating a paedophile ring. Police, who had seized address books belonging to Stark, which led them in the direction of a wider paedophile network across a range of public schools, culminating in 15 raids involving eight police forces. At this time that a teacher at the Menuhin School (presumably Johnson) was charged with child pornography offences (‘Public school teacher facing child pornography charges’, The Guardian, 2/8/97; Peter Hetherington, Duncan Campbell, Rebecca Smithers and David Brindle, ‘Suicide pointed police to new schools’, The Guardian, 21/11/97).

The pattern of anonymous letters sent to the Head of the Menuhin School was repeated at various other schools across the country. Someone was aware of a variety of teachers in this respect. In 1996, video tapes were seized from the premises belonging to director of music Philip Cartledge at Harrow School, though Cartledge was not arrested or charged (Gary Jones, ‘Sex Cops seize Videos at Top School’, News of the World, 12/5/96). In 1997, a nationwide investigation, Operation Fledgling, was launched after a former teacher at Abberley Hall in Worcestershire allegedly told a colleague that he was part of a paedophile network, saying he had had sex with ‘hundreds and hundreds of boys’ and naming teachers at sex other establishments. The operation, which lasted a year, targeted what were described as known ‘homosexual paedophiles’ at Eton and Wellington College, Berkshire, Harrow, Hurstpierpoint and elsewhere; by 2000, major investigations were still going on at Eton in particular (‘Eton targeted in paedophile inquiry at top public schools’, The Sunday Times, 8/8/00). Early in 2014, an article by Andrew Norfolk in the times drew attention to a whole 130 private schools at which teachers had been implicated in sexual crimes, with hundreds of children having been victims (Andrew Norfolk, ‘130 private schools in child abuse scandal’, The Times, 20/1/14).

There have been many scandals involving church organists, choirmasters and other musicians, too numerous to list here, and generally constituting a different field of activity to those in specialist music schools (except where such institutions overlap). Some are however especially worth noting, including the abduction and murder of 72-year old church organist John Smith, whose body was found in a flat in Islington in December 1999. Smith lived alone in St Leonards-on-Sea in West Sussex, and was assistant director of music at Monkton Combe School, in Bath, in the late 1950s. He was also organist at a number of churches in Hastings and St Leonards. It is thought that his murder may have been an act of revenge related to paedophile activities (Stewart Tendler, ‘Organist murder may be revenge’, The Times, 11/12/99).

A further scandal would hit Wells in 1999, when 33-year-old games master and house parent Paul Edmunds was forced to resign after he admitted an ‘improper relationship’ with a 17-year-old girl at the school at which he had been employed for four years (‘Teacher quits over relationship with pupil’, BBC News, 10/12/99, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/558462.stm (accessed 3/6/13)). A series of press reports detailed how the affair had been revealed by Edmunds wife Tracy (with whom he had two children; the couple had served as ‘assistant house parents’ in one of the seven boarding units of the school), the girl (named as Hannah Duke) had been interviewed by Social Services, and was likely to leave the school following the discovery of the relationship, which had begun when she was 16 at a junior sixth form ball. After discovery, Edmunds faxed his resignation to John Baxter, but there was no police investigation (Mervyn Hancock, ‘Teacher quits in cathedral school sex scandal: Wife exposes affair with ‘mature’ A-Level girl, aged 17′, Western Daily Press, 10/12/99; ‘Teacher quits in school sex row’, Bristol Evening Post, 10/12/99′ Tina Rowe, ”Terrible time’ for scandal schoolgirl: School not expecting her back after fling with teacher’, Western Daily Press, 11/12/99). Duke proclaimed after the resignation ‘I love him and he says he still loves me’, that ‘we have no intention of splitting up’ and ‘If anything this is the test that will keep us together’. She claimed ‘We didn’t always just jump into bed with one another. It was about trust and friendship more than anything. Sometimes I would just hug him and ask him to make me feel better’. Edmunds himself said ‘I have abused the trust of friends and colleagues but my relationship with Hannah is too important to me to lose’. The two had been ‘just friends’ for 18 months before the sixth form ball, after which Duke (whose two older daughters had also attended the school) described at length how ‘besotted’ she became with Edmunds; they had even booked a weeklong millennium break together in Budapest. Duke had confided in some relatives for whom she had worked as a nanny about the affair, and they had furiously told her to end it, but after temporarily doing so, she claimed she could not keep away from him and their relationship resumed. Duke’s own future at the school was put into doubt by the fact that she had engaged in under-age drinking with Edmunds at the sixth-form ball (Lucie Morris, ‘The prefect and the games master’, Daily Mail, 11/12/99; Rachael Bletchly, ‘My nights of passion with Sir in a seaside B&B, by his school prefect lover aged 17: Sixth-former tells for first time of affair with teacher’, The People, 12/12/99). Less than two weeks after Edmund’s resignation, the couple were spotted entwined together, to the apparent continuing disapproval of Duke’s parents (Lucie Morris, ‘Reunited: Prefect of 17 and the games master’, Daily Mail, 20/12/99). Two years later, according to a journalist from the Mail on Sunday, the affair was over, Duke was contrite and somewhat bitter at what she claimed was jealousy and insecurity on the part of Edmunds. They had gone to live together in Edmund’s marital home in Brecon, Powys, after his wife Tracey had fled with their children and he had temporarily secured a job at a college there. He had however had to resign after his new employers found out about his past, and their life together became more insecure and turned sour; she had taken the role of a housewife whilst also working as a hotel waitress, after flunking her A-levels and missing out on a university place. Unable to get another job, he was forced to rely on benefits. Eventually the relationship crumbled under such pressures and the unhappiness it was causing Duke, who left Edmunds. She would go on to start a job in a solicitor’s office, whilst he had apparently met another woman (Rachel Kaufman, ‘I was seduced by my games master but two years with him nearly destroyed me: 17-year-old in school affair scandal tells how jealous older lover turned her life into sheer hell’, The Mail on Sunday, 2/12/01).

At the beginning of 2002, the Royal Northern College of Music appointed the violinist Malcolm Layfield, director of the renowned Goldberg Ensemble and leader of the London Bach Orchestra, and formerly a long-term teacher at Chetham’s, as Head of Strings (having already taught at the institution for some time). Layfield’s appointment immediately infuriated above all the pianist Martin Roscoe, then Head of Keyboard at the RNCM, in full knowledge of the fact that Layfield was widely known as a predator upon his female students. By the summer it was reported in three national newspapers that both Roscoe and fellow pianist Kathryn Stott had resigned their positions at the institution on the grounds of Layfield’s appointment; an internal investigation had taken place, and Layfield had admitted to at least six relationships with students during the 1980s and early 1990s, the latest ending in 1994. It was further said that there was ‘no suggestion that the affairs were not consenting or involved underage students’. Greater Manchester Police had been informed, but had not launched an investigation themselves, having received no formal complaint, though a spokeswoman said that they were ‘currently in discussions with the college’. The principal of the college, Edward Gregson, wrote to all staff and students to inform them of Roscoe’s resignation and give full backing to Layfield (Paul Harris, ‘Sex row splits elite academy’, The Observer, 30/6/02; Sinead Mcintyre, ‘Music college master ‘had affairs with at least 6 pupils”, Daily Mail, 1/7/02; John Mahoney, ‘He bedded at least 6 pupils; Fury as music lecher gets top college job’, Daily Star, 2/7/02). A scathing article followed in the Daily Mail, calling Layfield ‘a sexual predator and a serial philanderer with a weakness for young girls, particularly girls in his charge’, and revealing how there had been statements from ‘victims’ following his appointment. Drawing upon correspondence during the investigation, the Mail claimed that these statements painted ‘ a picture of a manipulative, ruthless operator who systematically abused his position of trust for his own sexual gratification’, and drew attention to Layfield’s rather grand (married) lifestyle (also noting that his son was a policeman), and common strategy of plying students with drink and ‘flattery and promises to help the students’ careers’, and presented troubling accounts of former students driven later to long-term psychiatric problems and suicide attempts. It also became clear that Layfield’s actions took place at Chetham’s as well as the RNCM, and involved girls as young as 16. Several of the girls (Layfield had admitted affairs with six) spoke to the journalist and described particular incidents, including one where two girls and a boy, all then aged 16, were driven into an isolated spot during a college trip to the West Country, with two of them needing to leave as Layfield ‘came on’ to one of the girls. Layfield’s power over students and bullying tactics, and the wider issue of the mental hold which music teachers can have over pupils, was further evoked in the article. Two individuals were singled out for criticism over the appointment: Gregson, and Lord Armstrong, the former Cabinet Secretary who was chair of the board of governors at the RNCM, both of whom had spoken with Roscoe and heard the reports from former students, but claimed that Layfield was now a ‘changed man’; furthermore it was reported that Roscoe’s resignation had been claimed by Layfield’s solicitor to be on grounds of ‘professional jealousy’ (Paul Bracchi and Sineay Mcintyre, ‘School for Scandal: He now holds one of the most prestigious posts in classical music, yet as this special investigation reveals, he used his position to seduce a string of impressionable young students in his care, and amazingly he has still got his top job’, Daily Mail, 11/7/02).

One of the articles on the Layfield affair also cited the mother of a former student (both anonymous) at a top London specialist college on how ‘her daughter’s affair with an academic had almost ruined her life and led her to serious health problems including anorexia’ (Harris, ‘Sex row splits elite academy’); this is likely to have been one of the students involved in a complaint alluded to in a heavily legally-redacted article from September of that year concerning ‘a series of allegations against a teacher’ at the Royal Academy of Music. This article pointed out that several students had complained, after one pupil alleged post-traumatic stress and depression following a 17-month relationship with the teacher, but after an investigation by a Professor Bob Hepple QC, on behalf of the college, the allegations were found to be unproven. The teacher concerned had been suspended then reinstated, and the RAM instituted new guidelines dissuading staff from entering into sexual relationships with students, but insisting that where relationships do develop, they must immediately be reported to the college authorities. Roscoe was interviewed for this article and highlighted the closeness of one-to-one teacher-pupil relationships (Rajeev Syal, Marcello Mega and Angelika Bachmann, ‘Top music college gives staff sex warning’, The Telegraph, 8/9/02). Similar material was given in a further article in the Mail (James Tozer, ‘Sleep with a student and you will face the music’, Daily Mail, 9/9/02).

In September 2003, the violinist Nigel Kennedy, who studied at the Yehudi Menuhin School from 1964 to 1974, alleged in a BBC Radio 3 interview with critic and writer Norman Lebrecht that young girls were sexually abused at the school during his time. Kennedy claimed that ‘There were strange things going on with some of the girls and the older teachers that would have been illegal, definitely’, pointed out that many of the girls did not talk about the abuse until 20 years after the event. Indicating that just one particular teacher was responsible, Kennedy said that he felt able to speak about this since the teacher concerned and many of his family members were now dead; nonetheless Kennedy did not name the teacher in question. However, when asked why so many music teachers had been involved in cases of molestation (something about which the interviewer likely then already knew much more than he was able to reveal publicly), Kennedy evoked a theme which would become common in discussions of the phenomenon of music school abuse ten years later: ‘Maybe it’s very close to religion, music. If you’ve got someone who’s like a guru figure, you probably might think what they’re doing is right’ (David Smith, ‘Kennedy reveals abuse at music school’, The Observer, 28/9/03).

Other stories continued to surface of music teachers in other environments abusing children, even one involving Jonathan Rees-Williams, a former choirmaster to the Queen, who was jailed for five years in 2004 for a string of sexual attacks on children (David Wilkes, ‘Jailed, the royal choirmaster who abused children’, Daily Mail, 26/8/04). In 2006, Brian Davey, author of various books on playing the recorder which had become standard texts on the subject, was jailed for thirteen years for sexually abusing girls as young as four; he had molested pupils whilst playing the piano, tried to rape a girl of nine in the staff room, and lured girls into cupboards, whilst teaching in schools in Islington, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire and Cambridgshire, as well as giving private lessons; he had previously been arrested but not charged in 1987 (and not placed on a sex offenders’ register even after being sacked from a job in 2003), subsequently undergoing treatment at a sex offenders’ clinic (David Sanderson, ‘Teacher jailed for decade of abuse’, The Times, 11/3/06; ‘Girl Abuse Sir is jailed’, The Mirror, 11/3/06; ‘Pervert evaded justice for 20 years’, Daily Mail, 15/3/06). Davey’s stepdaughter Antoinette Lyons, who waived her anonymity, called for his books to be withdrawn, saying they ‘were written with one aim – to get to children’; one Detective Inspector acknowledged that there was also a strong possibility of there being other victims of Davey who had not come forward (Finlo Rohrer, ‘Can the art of a paedophile be celebrated?’, BBC News, 5/9/07; Wendy Wallace, ‘Stop the music’, Times Educational Supplement, 30/6/06).

But the other stories involving musicians receded into history in terms of media coverage, and were not evoked after another major abuse scandal in the music world, the arrest and conviction of the renowned conductor Robert King, director of the King’s Consort, internationally recognised as a leading expert conductor of the works of Henry Purcell (who some would maintain was the greatest of all English composers) and biographer of the composer (Robert King, Henry Purcell (London: Thames & Hudson, 1995)). King was also known to a wider public through his conducting work for the Hollywood film The Da Vinci Code, and also The Chronicles of Narnia and Pirates of the Caribbean (”Da Vinci’ Sex Rap’, The Mirror, 24/10/06). Following arrest and charge in autumn 2006, King went on trial in Isleworth in May 2007, accused of 15 counts of sexual assault between 1983 and 1994 against five boys, three of whom were under 16 and one of whom was alleged to have been abused over three years from the age of 12, at a leading West London public school (the identity of which is unclear and could not be named for legal reasons) where he was director of music, and also at a musical residential course. Some of the abuse was alleged to have taken place during mock wrestling or when boys lay in bed in dormitories or at home (Steve Bird, ‘Da Vinci Code conductor accused of assaulting schoolboy musicians’, The Times, 9/5/07). King was said to have given boys large amounts of alcohol and they would sometimes awake to find him performing a sexual act upon them. Furthermore, they had all been ‘young people who were all passionate about music and they were people who Robert King was in a position to advance’ (Duncan Robertson, ‘Conductor ‘molested boys after plying them with drink”, Daily Mail, 9/5/07). King denied the charges and recalled having received a vitriolic letter from one of the complainants, who he called a ‘looney … off his rocker’, but was found guilty of 14 of the 15 counts and jailed for 45 months; reports spoke of how he had used ‘god-like’ status in order to exploit the boys (‘Musician ‘Pervert”, The Mirror, 19/5/07; ‘Orchestra Conductor jailed for Child Sex Abuse’, PA Regional Newswire for English Regions, 4/6/07). The judge, Hezlett Colgan, commented during sentencing of a ‘gross breach of trust’ from ‘a trusted mentor and friend’ (‘Conductor jailed for sexual assault’, Richmond and Twickenham Times, 8/6/07).

But some commentators seemed unhappy with the fact that King had been brought to justice, appearing to view his musical abilities as somehow constituting a mitigating factor. One wrote of how ‘I really do wish justice had not been done not least because I was about to book tickets for his New Year’s Eve concert, dammit’, ‘he provided me with some of the most intense musical experiences I’ve ever had and, for me though obviously not the courts these and his golden recordings have put him beyond reproach’ and ‘In fact I always thought I should be subpoenaed to provide evidence for the presence of his inescapable charm’ (Igor Toronyi-Lalic, ‘Conductor jailed’, The Telegraph, 5/6/07). After King was dropped by his agent, Harrison Parrott, the poet James Fenton wrote that ‘One might have thought that, whatever the rights and wrongs of the case, a separation could be made between professional or artistic matters and the conductor’s personal life. And besides, an artist who has just been sent to Wormwood Scrubs is going to need some professional assistance in sorting out his affairs. This is one thing that agents are for’ and whilst not condoning the offences, also said:

For the ordinary, anonymous private citizen convicted in such cases, there is the sentence itself, and there is what you might call the multiplier: you lose your job, very likely your home, you are submitted to persecution by fellow prisoners, and so forth. There are many aspects to this multiplier, which continue well after your release. Anyone who has watched the multiplier in action will be bound to feel horror at its effects.
[….]
As it is, the King’s Consort and its choir are being conducted, in the immediate future, by their recently appointed associate, the harpsichordist Matthew Halls. The consort is managed by King’s wife, who stood by her husband throughout the case. Presumably the future of the whole operation is in some question. It is a tragedy for all concerned. And I strongly believe that when our most distinguished artists are in such terrible situations – whether or not they brought it on themselves – we should offer them some kind of support, not because, as artists, they deserve a better treatment than anyone else, but simply because we have so much to thank them for. (James Fenton, ‘Review: Things that have interested me’, The Guardian, 16/6/07).

King was not banned from working in the future with children (ibid), but the King’s Consort temporarily changed their name, to the Retrospect Ensemble, making their debut in such a form in May 2009 (Ivan Hewett, ‘The born again ensemble; Back to the future’, The Telegraph, 30/4/09). King had already been released by this time and claimed that many of his former colleagues were still happy to work with him and was planning a comeback (Ibid; Geoff Brown, ‘Retrospect Ensemble; arts first night Concert’, The Times, 6/1/10); by May 2010 at the latest the King’s Consort were once again performing under their original name, in the presence of the Prince of Wales (Joe Ware, ‘Prince Charles to visit Malmesbury’, The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald, 16/3/10; ‘Early music festival will celebrate key anniversaries’, Kentish Gazette, 10/6/10). Both the group and King himself continue to maintain a flourishing international career to this day (See the King’s Consort’s website at http://www.tkcworld.org/; the biography of King at http://www.tkcworld.org/robertking/page/3/ and King’s own website at http://www.robertking.eu/ (all accessed 25/5/13)), celebrated by various critics (see for example Geoff Brown, ‘King’s Consort/King at Wigmore Hall: Robert King’s triumphant return from prison with the King’s Consort is a youthful performance that speaks to audiences’, The Times, 20/12/12).

In 2008, a part-time music teacher who was also a youth worker at St Mary’s Music School in Edinburgh (as well as another city church), Jamieson Sutherland, was caught with 4000 pornographic images of children (some as young as just four) on his computer, some of the most severe level. Sutherland pleaded guilty to allowing such photographs to be taken or made at his home over a four year period, and was sentenced to 18 months in prison and placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years (‘Music teacher viewed child porn’, BBC News Scotland, 24/10/08; Kirsty Urquhart, ‘Teacher is jailed for having 4,000 child porn images’, Daily Mail, 25/10/08; Mark Smith, ‘Horrific Abuse: Teacher had 4,000 vile kid porn pics’, The Mirror, 25/10/08). Then in July of the following year, a deputy house parent at the school responsible for general supervision and care of boarders at the school, Ryan Deneven-Lewis, then 27, admitted in court to having unprotected sex with a 16-year old pupil and encouraging a 15-year old girl to perform various sexual acts upon him, during a period between January and April 2006, having been caught after leaving messages on a website (‘School assistant admits having sex with boarders’, STV, 14/7/09; ‘Net snares man who had sex with music school girl’, The Scotsman, 15/7/09). Deneven-Lewis, who no longer worked at the school, was placed on probation but also on the sex offenders register for three years, and required to take part in sex offenders group work (‘School worker placed on probation for sexual encounters with pupils’, The Telegraph, 25/8/09; Kenny McAlpine, ‘Jail let-off for pupil sex perv’, The Sun, 26/8/09; ‘Teacher at top private school had sex with pupil’, The Herald, 26/8/09; ‘A Week in Education’, TESS, 1/1/10). In December, the school was hit by a third scandal, after teacher Ashley Turnell was convicted of a nine-month sexual relationship with a 15-year old boy. He was given probation, community service, and also placed on the sex offenders register for three years. The then Member of the Scottish Parliament for the area, Lord George Foulkes, called for an inquiry from Scottish Education Minister Mike Russell, whilst it emerged that the Lothian and Borders Police, the Care Commission and HM Inspectorate of Education were all looking into events at the school (‘Private school faces inquiry over third sex scandal in a year’, The Scotsman, 17/12/09; Maggie Barry, ‘School of Shame: Call for probe at academy’, The Mirror, 18/12/09; Paul Thornton, ‘Top school hit by sex scandal no. 3: Perv Sir struck off for fling with lad, 15’, The Sun, 18/12/09).

Another case, this time involving a female musician abuser, came to court in mid-2009. Helen Goddard, a trumpet teacher at City of London School for Girls admitted six counts of sexual activity with a girl aged 13-15 in August of that year (‘Teacher sex charge’, The Times, 11/8/09). It transpired that Goddard, 26 at the time of coming to court, and known to pupils as the ‘jazz lady’ (as she taught jazz trumpet) had been found after a police raid following an anonymous tip-off (as gossip was buzzing around the pupils), and had groomed the young girl for sex over coffee after lessons. Disturbingly, Goddard’s victim was publicised declaring she was ‘in love’ with Goddard, and would continue their relationship when she was 16; she had also previously declared the relationship to her mother (Lee Cain, ‘Teacher: My Lesbian Affair with Girl, 15; ‘Jazz Lady’ admits guilt’, The Sun, 19/8/09; Emily Andrews, ‘I’m in Love with Lesbian Teacher, says girl pupil’, Daily Mail, 19/8/09); one report said that the parents were happy for this relationship to continue at a later stage (Andy Bloxham and Aislinn Simpson, ‘Music teacher admits secret lesbian affair with pupil, 15’, Daily Telegraph, 19/8/09). Various reports from the trial mentioned that Goddard herself looked young, almost like a teenager, as if this changed anything (see the previous articles, and Rachel Porter, ‘A catastrophic seduction’, Daily Mail, 22/8/09). Goddard’s father, himself a musician, said simply that ‘Choosing to have a relationship with a young pupil was obviously a mistake, but I understand it was always consensual’ (Porter, ‘A catastrophic seduction) (seemingly unaware of the concept of an age of consent, just as he claimed to be unaware his daughter was gay). After Goddard engaged in classic victim-blaming when saying she was the one ‘pressured’ into the relationship by the pupil, she was jailed for 15 months. She was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for 10 years, and was banned for life from working with children. The judge said:

Pupils are susceptible to abuse by those who teach them. The teacher’s position of authority, their influence on the class, pupils’ admiration of them, pupils’ desires to be liked, their desire to impress or to be a special favourite makes it easy for a teacher, who so wishes, to take advantage of their pupils and start a relationship.

In this case you clearly knew it was wrong to a start a sexual relationship with her and you knew the dangers to your career as a teacher.

The relationship involved a fair degree of deception not only in respect of the school but also to the girl’s parents. They made a statement they felt you betrayed their trust. They feel particularly betrayed by the deception of the Paris weekend.

This case is so serious that an immediate prison sentence is inevitable. (Melvyn Howe, ‘Teacher jailed for lesbian affair with pupil’, Press Association, 21/9/09).

It became clear that a long range of texts on both the child and the teacher’s phone were an important part of the evidence, as well as a range of sex toys (ibid).

As in the case of Robert King, various journalists attempted to minimise the significance and potential damage of the case. One wrote extremely naively that ‘There is no doubt that the softly spoken and devoutly Christian Goddard is an unlikely woman to find herself cast in the role of sexual predator’ (as if abusers would not be softly spoken or Christian), also reporting sympathetically how ‘heartbroken’ Goddard was at being separated from the girl; many letters were apparently written to the judge vouching for Goddard’s character (Porter, ‘A catastrophic seduction’). Germaine Greer, author of the pederastic book The Boy (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), who had proudly told the Sydney Morning Herald that ‘A woman of taste is a pederast – boys rather than men’ (see Greer in interview with Andrew Denton, 15/9/03), wrote a shocking article defending the abuse of children by both men and women. Greer wrote disparagingly about the fact that one uncle was jailed for abusing a young niece who had told her story to Greer, who also wrote ‘So how old was she? How old was he? I don’t know and I don’t very much care. I know I’m supposed to care. I’m supposed to think that falling in love with people under the legal age of consent is evidence of deep perversion and vileness, but I don’t’, and trying to claim that this abuse was really about ‘love’, bemoaning how at the hands of the girl, ‘Goddard might find herself, besides being disgraced and stigmatised for ever, dumped for a man’ (Germaine Greer, ‘Jazz Lady’s affair was foolish not evil; falling for a minor is not evidence of perversion or vileness’, The Times, 23/9/09); the article was published alongside an anonymous account of a lesbian sexual affair with a 32-year old teacher when the author was 15 and at a co-ed public school in Surrey (Anonymous, ‘My lesbian fling with a teacher’, The Times, 23/9/09). An article in the Times Educational Supplement argued that this sentence ‘divides opinion’ (Ed Dorrell, ‘Abuse or love? Jailing of lesbian re-opens debate’, Times Educational Supplement, 25/9/09). The Telegraph printed an anonymous piece by a man who had had an affair with his female gym teacher, though this would not have been a criminal offence since he was 19, rather than 15, at the time (Anonymous, ‘Why I never regretted my length affair with the gym mistress’, The Telegraph, 26/9/09). In The Observer, Victoria Coren wrote an especially crass and trivialising piece, including the following:

Not only does she play the trumpet, she is “a trumpet mistress”. Was there ever a ruder-sounding description in the English language? It’s like something you’d find pinned in a phone box. “TRUMPET MISTRESS, 26. CALL ME AND I’LL TEACH YOU HOW TO BLOW.”

Not only is she blonde and thin, a trumpet mistress who goes both ways, she is now in a women’s prison. I’m quite sure I once read that photo-story in one of my dad’s old soft porn mags.[….]

In this case, we know very little about the victim, other than that she is a teenage girl who went for jazz lessons. That in itself was misguided. Jazz can’t be taught. You have to feel it, man. . .

In disapproval, we imagine her to be a particularly vulnerable child, a late developer, seeking guidance and emotional support from a teacher who vaulted what should be a concrete border between caretaking and inappropriate intimacy. This is what the schoolgirl’s parents mean when they say that the Jazz Lady betrayed “our daughter’s need for her to maintain safe boundaries”.

It may well be true that most cases of teacher/pupil affairs boil down to exactly this abrogation of responsibility to the lonely or undersocialised child. But, funnily enough, not in my experience. When I was at school, it was the coolest girls, the most mature and confident, who had affairs with teachers. [….]

So, the parents of the Jazz Lady’s “victim” should perhaps be comforted by the possibility that their daughter is stronger than they know. For all her pop-star exes and brassy instruments, Helen Goddard is probably the one who fears other people, hunches from low self-esteem and fails in social situations; if she were otherwise, she would have found romance somewhere healthier than her own classroom. (Victoria Coren, ‘Even now I’d not be confident enough to sleep with a teacher’, The Observer, 27/9/09).

This case and others involving non-music teachers of both sexes would later spark several articles considering the nature of teacher-pupil relationships (see Adrian Lee, ‘School for Scandal: Who do so many pupils have affairs or run off with their teachers’, The Express, 26/9/12; and Caroline Davies, ‘Pupil-teacher relationships: ‘The child feels beholden to the adult’’, The Guardian, 26/9/12, in which a figure of 129 was given for the number of teachers prosecuted for relationships with pupils between 1991 and 2008; a rather more apologetic view could be found in Joanna Briscoe, ‘Lessons in (illicit) love: Teacher-pupil affairs provoke moral outrage but is the adult always at fault?’, The Times, 8/7/11).

In 2010, a further complaint emerged, this time at the Purcell School, involving a meeting between the then-headteacher, Peter Crook, and a group of boys; I am not at liberty to divulge further details of this here. Following complaints, the Chair of Governors, Graham Smallbone, reported two separate investigations by social services and Hertfordshire Constabulary, which found no child protection issues were raised. The talk was defended on grounds of preventing sexual bullying such as had occurred in the dormitories of the school; Smallbone wrote to parents to this effect (‘School Claims Unfounded’, Watford Observer, 9/4/10). However, around 18 months later, Crook resigned suddenly in the middle of term, after his position had apparently become ‘untenable’. The governors had been accused of ignoring allegations of inappropriate behaviour, and an anonymous letter accused them of placing the position of the headmaster ahead of child welfare and safety. Furthermore, it was revealed that an Ofsted inspection from November 2009, whilst rating the school ‘satisfactory’ in terms of child protection, had found that there had ‘been a wave of unhappiness directed at the head teacher’ (Mike Wright, ‘Head resigns from Purcell School in Bushey’, Watford Observer, 13/10/11; Joanna Sugden, ‘Head quits as letter reignites child welfare claims’, The Times, 7/11/11). The resignation continued to be shrouded in mystery, and waves of claims and counter-claims (some of them suggesting that Crook was himself the victim of in-house bullying) have emerged in particular on the blog of Norman Lebrecht, many of them from individuals either currently or formerly working at the school (See in particular Norman Lebrecht, ‘Head of music school resigns. No comment’, 27/10/11, at http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/10/head-of-music-school-resigns-no-comment.html (accessed 25/5/13); ”Sexual bullying’, unfounded claims and the headless music school’, 28/10/11, at http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/10/sexual-bullying-police-inquiries-and-the-headless-music-school.html (accessed 25/5/13) ; ‘Headless school seeks to reassure worried parents’, 7/11/11, at http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/11/headless-school-seeks-to-reassure-worried-parents.html (accessed 3/6/13); ‘A parent’s concerns: more questions for troubled music school’, 4/12/11, at http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2011/12/a-parents-concerns-more-questions-for-troubled-music-school.html (accessed 25/5/13); ‘Sex-bullying school seeks soft publicity’, 1/2/12, at http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/02/sex-bullying-school-seeks-soft-publicity.html (accessed 3/6/13); Lebrecht has continued to follow unfolding events at the Purcell School – see http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/?s=purcell+school (accessed 30/12/13)). An interim headmaster, Paul Elliott, remained in place until September 2012, when the new headmaster David Thomas was appointed (Norman Lebrecht, ‘Breaking: Troubled music school appoints new head. Yet again’, 28/3/12, at http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/03/breaking-troubled-music-school-appoints-new-head-yet-again.html (accessed 3/6/13); Amie Mulderrig, ‘Bushey music school welcomes new headmaster’, Watford Observer, 16/9/12).

Also in 2010, a music teacher at various East London schools and choirmaster Michael Crombie first went on trial in November, then aged 73, on 28 charges of indecent assault upon nine girls aged under 16 and child pornography offences from between 1992 and 2002. The court heard that Crombie had forced young girls to strip and duck their heads in a fish tank, then he would video them. He told one girl aged between 10 and 12 that this technique, ‘bubbling’, would help improve her recorder playing. The court saw a video of a young girl with her wrists and legs bound with his tie, trying to break free and gasping for air before being pushed back into the water. Crombie would also take girls on his lap and molest them under the pretext of helping them with breathing exercises. The court heard that victims were unable to complain because of Crombie’s eminence (he was also a Rotary Club member). He was found guilty of 26 of the charges and jailed for seven years, as well as being ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for life, and banned from unsupervised contact with children (Alex Peake, ‘Sir’s ‘fish tank thrill with girls”, The Sun, 18/11/10; ‘Music teacher jailed for holding pupil underwater to satisfy fetish’, Daily Telegraph, 21/12/10; ‘Teacher ‘filmed pupils in his bath’’, Metro, 18/11/10; ‘Music teacher with ‘underwater sexual fetish dunked naked female student in bath’, Daily Mail, 19/11/10; Fiona Hamilton, ‘Music teacher abused girls during lessons’, The Times, 27/11/10; Mike Sullivan, ‘Perv Sir’s ‘drown’ sessions’, The Sun, 27/11/10). In December 2012, Crombie admitted 47 further counts of indecent assaults upon children between 1964 and 1993, and two counts of sexual activity with a child; these included 16 cases which took place at Beal Grammar School and Wanstead High School when Crombie was a teacher there; most of the others occurred when he worked as a private music tutor between 1991 and 2002. 30 new victims, aged between 11 and 17 at the time of the offences, had come forward, after one had been outraged by Crombie’s asking her to act as a character reference during his previous trial in 2010. She described how he would regularly kiss her, ask her to turn up to lessons naked, and imagine how she would feel if he were to rape her, leading to her running out screaming. Another said he told her whilst groping and kissing ‘if you sing the notes right this wouldn’t be happening’. Crombie had had a sexual fling with a 14-year old girl to who he was teaching bassoon at Beal Grammar School, her parents ultimately trusting him to babysit her at home. He would persuade her to perform sex acts upon him in the school’s music room cupboard and also while he was driving. In January 2013, Crombie received a seven-year jail sentence, his earlier sentence having been reduced to five on appeal, so that he had been due for release in May 2013. The judge sharply criticised the school authorities for allowing Crombie to carry on unchallenged for 30 years, noting that complaints had been made to the school on a number of occasion, but no adequate action had been taken (‘Former London teacher Michael Crombie jailed for sex attacks’, BBC News, 25/1/13; ‘Ex-Music Teacher admits Sex Attacks’, Press Association, 21/12/12; ‘Judge criticises School Authorities’, Press Association, 25/1/13). An independent inquiry was launched by the Local Safeguarding Childen’s Board at Redbridge, considering which safeguarding systems and processes were in place during the period of Crombie’s serial abuse; this does not appear to have been completed yet (‘Independent inquiry launched into Redbridge music teacher’s abuse of young girls since the 1960s’, Ilford Recorder, 31/1/13). Following the first conviction, the critic Norman Lebrecht wrote:

And then ask why it always has to be music teachers, and why so often in Britain. Is it because music, like sport, has tactile teaching elements that attract perverts? Or does music grant a license to perverts to act out their fantasies?

I have no statistics to hand, but it’s Don Giovanni to a string quartet that there are ten times as many music teachers who are caught molesting pupils as chemistry or geography beaks. Now why is that? Does music, in some obscure way, attract sadists and corrupters? ( Norman Lebrecht, ‘Why is it always music teachers’, Slipped Disc, 22/12/10).

This was not all. David Sanger, the President of the Royal College of Organists, faced eight charges of child sexual abuse against males aged under 16 between 1978 and 1982, and appeared in court in May 2010. Three days later he was found dead and an inquest delivered a verdict of suicide. He was apparently going to fight the charges, but changed his mind after reading a report (‘Organist Sanger killed himself ‘over child sex charges’, BBC News Cumbria, 18/1/11). Based at The Old Wesleyan Chapel in Embleton, Sanger had been President of the RCO since 2008, and taught organ at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities as well as at the RNCM; he had also made more than 20 CDs (‘Organist on child abuse charges found dead’, Daily Telegraph, 29/5/10; ‘Acclaimed organist accused of sex offences found dead’, BBC News Cumbria, 28/5/10).

Then a further little-reported scandal occurred in November 2012 when the Head of Strings at the Royal Conservatory of Scotland (since 2003), Hungarian-born Peter Lissauer, was removed from his position following an investigation by management into claims that he inappropriately ‘touched girls’. The investigation ‘accepted a number of the accusations were well-founded’. One insider said that ‘A number of young women said they had been groped, touched inappropriately and generally made to feel uncomfortable when they were alone with him. It was something his female students had discussed between themselves, but didn’t know what to do as he was head of school and had considerable power over their futures’. No criminal proceedings occurred, and Lissauer continued to teach privately (Marcello Mega, ‘Sacked music academy maestro ‘touched girls”, Mail on Sunday, 4/11/12. Lissauer’s current biography can be found at http://peterlissauer.com/about/ and includes a range of ‘testimonials’ by former students of both sexes at http://peterlissauer.com/testimonials/ (both accessed 3/6/13)).

As mentioned earlier, between 1945 and 1989 only four public inquiries were held into institutional abuse. These were the Court Lees inquiry (1967) into excessive use of corporal punishment at Court Less approved school in Surrey, the Leesway Children’s Home inquiry (1985) following offences of indecency involving the taking of photographs of children, the Kincora Boy’s Home, Belfast, inquiry (1986), following suggestions of a paedophile ring operative at the institution, and the Melanie Klein House inquiry (1988) into the use of restraints upon older girls in an establishment managed by Greenwich Social Services Department (see Brian Corby, Alan Doig & Vicki Roberts, Public Inquiries into Abuse of Children in Residential Care (London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001), pp. 79-81 for an overview of these four inquiries). Numerous other inquiries have followed since the 1990s, and the sexual abuse of children began to feature more prominently (one study suggests that the inquiries in the mid-1980s viewed sexual abuse in institution as part of a ‘bad apple’ syndrome (ibid. p. 83)). Most relevant to this amongst the post-1989 inquiries include the following:

• The “Acknowledgement Forum” allows people to contribute their experiences without any of the stress of having to appear on a witness stand. All info to be collated into a report, and records destroyed after the Inquiry ends.
• The “Statutory Inquiry” is more public and involves questioning, but not aggressive cross-examination (and names cannot be published by the press). They have the legal authority to force institutions to release documents or appear for questioning if needed.

This may be a good model for the workings of an inquiry into abuse in musical education.

Issues which a public inquiry might address would include the following:

Appendix: Article by Ian Pace for Times Educational Supplement, published online 8/5/13

The culture of music education lends itself to abuse

My own formative years, between ages 10 and 18, were spent at Chetham’s – better known as Chet’s – from 1978 to 1986, always as a boarder.

Desiring Progress

The Blog of Ian Pace, pianist, musicologist, political animal. A place for thoughts, reflections, links, both trivial and not so trivial. Main website is at http://www.ianpace.com . Contact e-mail ian@ianpace.com.

Safeguarding and the Avoidance of Deskilling: Position Statement for Debate on ‘Music in the Curriculum: tensions, choices and opportunities’, City, University of London, 15 November 2019

Peter Morrison – the child abuser protected by MI5, the Cabinet Secretary, and Margaret Thatcher – updated July 2015

The Trial of Michael and Kay Brewer and the Death of Frances Andrade, and the Aftermath, 2013

Reported Cases of Abuse in Musical Education, 1990-2012, and Issues for a Public Inquiry

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