Ex-UNCSA teacher gets 5 years in prison for trafficking underage violin student for sex
A former North Carolina music professor who pleaded guilty to trafficking an underage student for sex will spend the next five years behind bars, a federal judge decided Thursday.
Stephen Shipps, 69, admitted last year to sexually abusing one of his violin students in 2002.
Women who studied violin with him at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts when they were teens said that he molested them too on campus and in his home.
Shipps first faced public scrutiny in 2018. That’s when the University of Michigan student newspaper investigated decades’ worth of sex abuse allegations about the professor, including some dating to his time at North Carolina’s School of the Arts.
Shipps promptly left his post.
The outcry escalated to criminal investigation, and in October 2020 federal authorities arrested Shipps. A former student told investigators that Shipps, while employed at Michigan, had twice taken her to New York and sexually abused her in 2002, when she was just 16 years old.
Shipps “was an excellent teacher to some... a monster to others... and both for some,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Woodward said at the sentencing.
A grand jury indicted him on two federal counts of trafficking a minor for sex. He pleaded guilty in November 2021 to one count.
As part of the plea deal, both sides agreed to a sentence from 57 to 71 months.
Shipps’ attorney John Shea filed a memo requesting he be spared prison that outlines his client’s recovery from alcohol addiction and caretaking of several family members. Prosecutors asked for 68 months behind bars, pointing to accounts of similar abuse from five of his former students, including four pupils from his 1980s stint at UNCSA.
“We acknowledge that it was a pattern [but] we don’t accept all the allegations,” Shea said. They presented 27 letters from his supporters, including former students and current church members, and framed Shipps’ guilty plea as an act of reparation.
U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood also ordered Shipps to pay for the victim’s restitution.
Shipps apologized for being a “bad citizen” and hurting the woman in the criminal case. He didn’t address his other accusers, including one UNCSA alumna who attended in person.
Because the crime took place before federal mandatory minimums were implemented for child sex trafficking convictions, the final decision was up to the judge.
Under current law, Shipps would have faced 10 years to life behind bars, at least double the actual sentence. He’ll also serve three years probation. Authorities haven’t yet set a date to arraign him.
Stephanie Silverman, another former UNCSA student, attended the hearing to support her friend. Shipps never abused Silverman while she attended in the 1980s, she said, but she still mourns for the three violinists that she believes he molested during her time at the school.
Shipps “weaponized the very real career dreams of disciplined, talented young women to force them into a world where his ability to open doors was contingent on their willingness to do what he wanted,” Silverman wrote in an April 6 letter asking the court to consider a lengthy sentence. “He turned their dreams and gifts into a trap to hold them in his abusive world.”
Silverman’s friend spoke to federal prosecutors and also joined generations of fellow alumni suing UNCSA.
In that pending civil case, 56 plaintiffs accused school leadership of sacrificing male and female students’ safety to salvage the conservatory’s reputation. Shipps was one of several former UNCSA teachers they accused of sexual assault, abuse and harassment.
Their attorney, longtime women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, said the sentence was “long overdue” for her three clients who filed complaints about Shipps, and every other victim.
Sammy Sussman is a student journalist at the University of Michigan.
This story was originally published April 14, 2022 at 1:03 PM.
