Further abuse claims at the Royal Academy of Music
mainWe’re hearing from former Royal Academy of Music students who are frustrated at the blank wall they encountered when reporting sexual impropriety by their teachers.
This week the head of Royal Academy Opera, Gareth Hancock, was suspended from his post after a singer at Glyndebourne (where he is on the music staff) complained of receiving inappropriate texts.
Our informants say that more than 15 complaints were made by students, male and female, to their RAM tutor Dr Sarah Callis. As far as the students are concerned no action was taken, though the matter was said to have been brought to the principal’s attention and the subject of the complaints was believed to have given an undertaking to behave better in future.
The complaints include:
– one student was told at Royal Academy Opera to ‘get used to the casting couch’;
– another was advised to take ‘a year out and go and work in a brothel’;
– a third, asking a teacher how she could please him, was told: ‘a blow job would be a good start’.
These students were in their early 20s or late teens, some fresh out of school. The complaints should be lodged in the Academy’s files.
The Academy has said it has no further comment at present.
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