One of the UK’s top music schools has been ordered to pay a former student £45,000 after a high court judge found it had “facilitated” her sexual abuse by her violin teacher.
Chetham’s School of Music (CSM) in Manchester has said it will “remain forever sorry” after the judge found it was “vicariously liable” for assaults by Wen Zhou Li on a pupil in 1997, when she was 15 or 16.
Li was charged with one count of rape and two counts of indecent assault in September 2014, following a wide-ranging investigation into abuse at the school.
Back then, many former pupils had come forward to Greater Manchester police (GMP) to make allegations about Chetham’s teachers, including Li, after the former head of music, Michael Brewer, was jailed in 2013 for sexually abusing a pupil. His victim, Frances Andrade, killed herself after giving evidence against him.
Li has always maintained his innocence and in 2016 the Crown Prosecution Service dropped the charges.
But earlier this year a former pupil, known by the pseudonym “Abigail”, decided to sue the school for damages. She said that Li abused her in the practice room at Chetham’s during lessons, as well as in his car and flat, and that the school was partly responsible.
She used to stay with him in the flat under a guardianship arrangement with her parents. All overseas students at the school then were given a UK-based guardian who was expected to have the pupil to stay with them every third weekend in term-time and during half-term holidays if they could not go home.
After a four-day hearing in March, Mr Justice Fordham found the assaults took place to the civil standard and that Chetham’s “created or significantly enhanced” the risk she would be abused. “The ‘initiation’ activity, the ‘grooming’, manipulation and control, started at [Chetham’s],” he added.
The civil standard requires a court to find it was more likely that an allegation is true as opposed to the criminal standard which requires a jury to be sure, also known as beyond reasonable doubt.
The judge found there was a “strong causative link” between Li’s employment by Chetham’s and his sexual assaults.
He said: “The employment relationship between CSM and Li caused Mr Li to have access to Abigail, in circumstances where sexual abuse was facilitated.
“The risk that Abigail would suffer the sexual abuse, which CSM through the employment relationship with Mr Li created or significantly enhanced, was a function of both close proximity and a position of trust.”
The hearing also heard that Li had been accused of sexual abuse by three other former pupils, two in their early 20s at the Royal Northern College of Music and one, aged only about 12, at the Yehudi Menuhin School, a specialist music boarding school in Surrey.
Following the ruling, Chetham’s issued a statement to say: “The current Chetham’s team carries a sense of deep regret and sorrow for the way in which some former teachers at our school betrayed and manipulated the trust that had been placed in them. We will remain forever sorry.
“While nothing can ever undo what happened in the past, our Chetham’s community today is determined to support survivors and work with safeguarding authorities in any way we can.”
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