Lawsuit Says Faculty at a Top Arts School Preyed on Students for Decades

The breadth of the 236-page complaint is as stunning as its details are disturbing.

A total of 56 former arts students say dozens of teachers and administrators participated in, or allowed, their sexual, physical and emotional abuse when they were in school. Overall, the misconduct spanned more than 40 years, beginning in the late 1960s, according to the lawsuit, and included assaults in classrooms, private homes off campus, a motel room off a highway, and a tour bus rumbling through Italy.

Respected figures in the dance and performing arts world who worked at the school are said to have participated.

The lawsuit, filed late last year, accuses faculty at the prestigious University of North Carolina School of the Arts of a range of abuses including rape. Court papers describe student complaints of being groped, of being fondled through their leotards and of alcohol-fueled dance parties where students as young as 14 were told to completely disrobe and perform ballet moves.

“We were children, and we were brave enough to come forward and not one single adult that represented the institution was as brave as we were,” said Melissa Cummings, 42, who described in an interview and court documents being invited to such parties as a student in 1995. She said she reported the abuse to the police and school officials when she was a senior there in 1997, but little changed.

“Your teenage years are so formative,” she said. “It destroyed me.”

Some of the teachers characterized in the lawsuit as the worst offenders are now dead. Others have yet to respond in court papers; still others declined or did not respond to requests for comment.