Decades of Systemic Sexual Abuse at Elite Arts School Uncovered as Epstein and 47 Others Preyed on Minors

Seventy years. That is the span an independent investigation now attributes to the sexual abuse of children at one of America's most prestigious arts schools, a boarding institution that trained generations of musicians, dancers and actors while, according to its own commissioned report, failing to protect them from the adults in its care.

The Interlochen Center for the Arts in northern Michigan released a 97-page external review this week documenting roughly 70 firsthand accounts of sexual misconduct involving 47 adults affiliated with the school between the 1950s and the 2010s.

Among those named is Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier and convicted sex offender, who first came to Interlochen as a teenage summer camper and returned decades later as a wealthy donor.

How a Single 2024 Complaint Reopened Seven Decades

The reckoning began with one alumna. In the summer of 2024, a woman who attended the academy in the 1970s told the school's board about her experience with a longtime faculty member and administrator, prompting Interlochen to commission an outside investigation into conduct across its history, the Interlochen Public Radio-affiliated review found.

What started as an inquiry into the 1960s and 1970s widened dramatically. Investigators conducted 180 interviews after the school asked any alumni who had witnessed or suffered abuse to come forward, and the resulting document runs to some 70 instances of misconduct, most of it detailed across roughly 60 pages of firsthand accounts from former students identified only as Alum 1, Alum 2 and so on to protect their privacy.

The man whose case triggered the review had been employed at Interlochen for more than five decades and died in 2021. Seven former students from the 1960s and 1970s accused him of sexual misconduct.

The most recent named individual, ballet instructor Thomas Clower, taught at the school from 2003 to 2005 and was convicted of criminal sexual conduct in 2005 after Interlochen reported him to police and dismissed him.

Epstein's Path From Teenage Camper To Named Abuser

Epstein's connection to the school stretches back nearly six decades and complicates the simple label of 'benefactor' that once attached to his name there.

He attended a summer camp at Interlochen as a teenager in 1967, long before the financial career and the crimes that would make him internationally notorious.

The report details previously unreported allegations against him involving two alumni who said Epstein had sexual contact with them after meeting them through Interlochen, more than five years before his first criminal conviction.

In one account, a former student said Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell invited her to his lodge, where Epstein engaged in sexual conduct with her.

His money later bought his name a permanent place on the campus. Epstein funded the construction of a scholarship lodge that bore his name until 2019, when the school stripped it off; the building itself was demolished last month, an erasure that arrived years after the harm and only weeks before the report made the reason for it public.

A Law That Leaves Survivors Without a Courtroom

For many of those who spoke to investigators, the report is as far as accountability will go. Interlochen forwarded the names of the accused to the Grand Traverse County prosecutor and sheriff, but Michigan's statute of limitations for criminal sex crimes, which varies by severity, has run out for a great many of the decades-old allegations, and a third of the accused are beyond any court's reach in death.

Matthew Curtis, a Michigan attorney representing multiple people who allege abuse at the school, has said plainly that some of his clients have no route to criminal charges because their abusers have died, and that current state law denies survivors access to justice.

The school, for its part, says it is now 'fundamentally different' from the institution described in the report, points to new background checks and mandated-reporting training, and has established a fund to cover counselling for affected alumni.

Paul Busch waited 21 years to say aloud what happened to him. Abused at 16 by the ballet teacher he idolised, living far from his parents and desperate to become a professional dancer, he said that he had minimised the assault even to the counsellor who asked about it at the time, out of denial and fear, a silence the report's authors and advocates say is typical of abused children.

He has already paid for years of his own therapy, and the school's belated counselling fund, he said, offers him little comfort now. His decision to attach his name to the story, after two decades of carrying it alone, is the kind of act the 46 unnamed others in the report may never feel able to make.

If you have been affected by sexual abuse, confidential support is available. In the US, the RAINN National Sexual Assault Hotline can be reached on 800-656-4673. In the UK, contact the NSPCC on 0808 800 5000 or, for adult survivors, the National Association for People Abused in Childhood on 0808 801 0331.