A timeline of sex abuse allegations at UNC School of the Arts

Some 60 alumni allege that North Carolina School of the Arts failed to protect them from sexual assault and abuse by faculty members over decades.

Here’s a timeline of assault and abuse claims against the school, with allegations spanning from the 1960s to 2018.

1965: The North Carolina School of the Arts opened as the nation’s first public conservatory, enrolling both high school and college-age students.

1969: A 12-year-old student enrolled in the summer and high school ballet programs. Her account includes the earliest allegations in the lawsuit that 56 plaintiffs filed against the school in 2021. Those claims include:

• Teacher Gary Burke locked her in a classroom and raped her.

• She witnessed dance instructor Duncan Noble molest a young boy in a campus studio.

• Dance teachers Richard Kuch and Richard Gain encouraged students to have sex and were rumored to sexually abuse students; Gain groped her in class

1972: The arts school became part of the University of North Carolina System of public campuses.

1983: Kuch was “subject to some inquiry” about allegedly sexually harassing a student, according to a 1995 letter from UNCSA Vice Chancellor Bill Pruitt stored in campus archives. Kuch kept his job.

1984: Kuch and Gain coerced a 16-year-old dance student into having sex and Gain sexually assaulted the boy at the couple’s home, a lawsuit claims. At least four other faculty members knew but failed to protect him, the suit says. Kuch booted him from the program, the former student alleges.

1989: Violin teacher Stephen Shipps, who three alumni now accuse of exploiting them sexually, left UNCSA and took a position at the University of Michigan.

1994: In anonymous survey, two faculty members listed staff sexually abusing students as their biggest concerns for the school, Pruitt told the Winston-Salem Journal in 1995. Gyula Pandi, then a dance teacher, told Pruitt that widespread knowledge of Kuch and Gain’s abuse made it difficult to recruit male dance students nationally, Pandi later told the Greensboro News and Record.

July 1995: The student who accused Kuch and Gain of sexually abusing him in 1984 filed a lawsuit against UNCSA, alleging negligence from faculty and administrators for failing to prevent the abuse.

August 1995: Kuch and Gain resigned from UNCSA, evading a planned campus hearing. UNC Board of Governors chair Sam Neill announced a commission to independently investigate allegations of sexual abuse at UNCSA.

November 1995: The commission released findings saying – incorrectly – that most of a very few alleged perpetrators had left the school. In fact, people called the inquiry hotline to accuse 24 staff and faculty of either abusing or having romantic relationships with students, according to an unpublished commission document the News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer obtained. And 13 of them were still working at the school.

December 1995: A judge dismissed the former dance student’s lawsuit because the plaintiff was in his late twenties. The state’s statute of limitations for child sex abuse lawsuit was the victim’s 21st birthday at that time.

March 1996: The UNC system adopted a new policy forbidding romantic or sexual relationships between employees and any underage students, as well as any students they supervise or evaluate.

2005: Alumna Blair Tindall published a memoir describing sexual harassment and sexual relationships with professors while a music student in the 1970s. Amazon adapted the memoir into the 2014 series “Mozart in the Jungle.” UNCSA never publicly responded to her allegations.

August 2019: Music dean Brian Cole became interim chancellor of UNCSA.

October 2019: State legislators unanimously passed the SAFE Child Act, which temporarily nullified the statute of limitations in child sex abuse lawsuits from January 2020 to December 2021.

October 2020: Shipps, the former UNCSA violin teacher, was indicted on two child sex trafficking charges alleging he sexually abused girls while on the Univeristy of Michigan faculty. UNCSA issued a statement saying it “has no record of similar incidents while he was employed at the school.”

February 2021: Two 2019 graduates sued UNCSA, alleging that faculty mishandled their sexual harassment complaints against former opera director Nic Muni.

September 2021: Seven alumni represented by attorney Gloria Allred sued UNCSA, accusing it of failing to protect them from sex abuse while underage dance students in the 1980s. Teachers sexually harassed them in class, and in some cases sexually assaulted them at their homes, they allege. The campus issued a statement disavowing sex abuse and highlighting policy and staffing changes implemented since the 1980s.

November 2021: Another 32 plaintiffs join the lawsuit, with allegations dating from the 1960s to the 2010s. UNCSA referred to the allegations as “historical” and disseminated a list of resources for students to address sex abuse and mental health.

December 2021: A three judge panel rules that the SAFE Child Act window is unconstitutional, ruling against plaintiffs who’d used it to sue. Their attorneys announced plans to appeal the decision; 17 more plaintiffs joined the group lawsuit against UNCSA days before the contested window expired.

April 2022: A federal judge sentenced former North Carolina School of the Arts music faculty member Stephen Shipps to five years in prison in a child sex trafficking case. While a professor at the University of Michigan, Shipps took a student to New York and sexually abused her in 2002, federal prosecutors said. She was 16 years old.

May 2024: UNC School of the Arts settles lawsuit for $12.5 million.

For more reporting on this topic, read UNC School of the Arts welcomed banned director after students alleged sexual abuse, suit says

This story was originally published August 28, 2024 at 5:30 AM.