Toronto: Why conductor was suspended
mainA statement by the Toronto Mendelssohn Choir:
To the TMC community —
Last night, we became aware of a media report that makes reference to allegations of sexual misconduct against Noel Edison.
News of these allegations may have elicited in you, as it has in us, feelings of shock and sadness.
Faced with this situation, we must make tough decisions, balancing the obligations we have to all parties involved. These parties include Noel and the complainants, and very importantly, they include choristers and all other members of the TMC and Elora Singers community.
We recently received letters of complaint from third parties regarding Noel’s conduct. These complaints were immediately raised to the Boards of both the TMC and the Elora Singers. Both organizations responded promptly by placing Noel on a personal leave of absence and launching an independent third party investigation. That investigation has already begun. Anyone having any information that they would like to share can contact TMC Chair Maureen Palmer or TMC Vice-Chair Cathy Conforzi, in confidence, at chair@tmchoir.org, or John Spearn, Director, Elora Singers at spearn@corcap.com.
To ensure the utmost integrity of this investigation, neither organization will make any public comment until the investigation is completed and the respective Boards of Directors have had time to review the information. Unfortunately, we are also not able to share further information with you until the investigation is complete.
Maureen Palmer
Chair, TMC Board of Directors
Cynthia Hawkins
Executive Director, TMC
John Spearn,
Director, Elora Singers
I realise that all these allegations are serious and when there are several (or more) something has to be done. Suspension may indeed be the solution. But there seems to be an increasing atmosphere of accusation equalling guilty verdict in some of these dispositions. I imagine most of the accused ARE guilty, deny it as they will, but some may not be, and the climate has been created whereby malice could be carefully applied to ruin a man’s career.
Not sure what the answer is — people accused of being sexual predators or something else along those lines should not be imposed upon workplaces or schools. But a careless word from a ticked-off person can do as much damage to an innocent person as a guilty verdict.
A reasonable comment, here on SlippedDisc? How did that happen?!