‘Depraved’ BBC Young Composer is sentenced for porn posts
NewsThe Cambridge-based composer Alexander Woolf has escaped a jail sentence for stealing the faces of 15 women from social media and uploading versions onto adult sites, with ‘sexually explicit and derogatory’ comments.
Alexander Woolf, 26, won BBC Young Composer of the Year in 2012.
One victim was alerted anonymously that her picture was being used in this way. Others were traced by police.
Varinder Hayre, CPS district crown prosecutor, said: ‘Woolf’s behaviour is severely depraved and reprehensible and has had a drastic impact on his victims.’
Woolf admitted 15 charges of sending by means of a public electronic communications network messages that were grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing nature. He was given 20 weeks imprisonment, suspended for two years. Woolf was also ordered to undertake a rehabilitation activity for 40 days, 40 sessions of a court-accredited sexual offending programme and 150 hours of unpaid work.
In addition, he must pay each of his 15 victims £100 compensation, as well as £85 costs and £128 victim surcharge, and may never contact them again.
Sentencing was on Monday.
Woolf, who has taken down his website, has just completed writing an opera for Grange Park Opera. Other work includes NHS Symphony in 2018, an award winner at the Prix Europa.
I understand that what he did was wrong and he is sick, but I cannot stop thinking that in the modern world many of the greats like Tchaikovsky, Lewis Carroll or Mozart would end up in prison or at least public sexual offenders lists, without any opportunity to work.
(Although Woolf is clearly not a Mozart nor a Tchaikovsky).
What an utterly nonsensical comment.
Your comment shows how little you understand about either Carroll or Mozart and their times. I more apt comparison to Woolf’s actions might be Joe Orton, who went to prison before he became a successful playwright for defacing library books.
Good to be reminded about this bit of Orton’s biography. I thank you for that, but the defacing of library books were often quite witty and artistic. As far as i’m aware the same can’t be said for what Woolf did. Time will only tell i guess.
Woolf is no Orton (an original voice) either.
I agree with you on all counts – Orton benefited from his time in prison and grew into an amazing writer. It is fun to go back and read Loot or What the Butler Saw from time to time.
Yes, if books had feelings and lives and weren’t inanimate objects.
You have no idea what you are talking about
well that’s his career wrecked. This story will hang around his neck for a long time
As it bloody well should. This is cyber-bullying, identity theft, whatever manner of perversion it takes to do such a thing to an innocent person. I know what I’d put around his neck: a pillory.
No need for foul language,just shows a lack of vocabulary.
If you think this is foul language, you haven’t been around the internet much.
Tell that to his victims.
“[he] may be a perverse…idiot, but it’s more dignified not to say so in as many words. A bland and deadly courtesy is more devastating, don’t you think?”
“Infinitely.”
And a right royal raspberry to you unless you recognise the quotation.
“No need for foul language,just shows a lack of vocabulary.”
Fun fact: If you’d cut foul language from your vocabulary, your vocabulary would become smaller. It’s a math thing. 😉
Castration would be best chemical, but ideally physical.
Frankly, he succeeded in being recognized as a composer in his lifetime, but not for his music….
He got off lightly. The payments to the victims are risible, and it’s hard to see why the sentence should have been suspended — a few moths in chokey would have been an eye-opener for this pervert.
I hope Cambridge, which has been a gleeful participant in all manner of wokery, is going to remove this perv from the necessary association with young people.
Judging by the sizes of the case files, he was getting off A LOT.
He is a resident of the city of Cambridge, not a student at the university
He actually was a student at Cambridge University and most recently was in a position of responsibility as a supervisor. Fellow students and his mentees were among the victims.
In the western world nobody is seriously worried about dealing with the criminal justice system. This is because of the egregious notion of “rehabilitation” – inflicted on us all by Lefty do-gooders in times past. We’ve read about it before on these pages, and one German offender springs to mind.
But if you’re middle class, white and extort money or defraud anybody WATCH OUT. Long years in the slammer for you.
Oh, that would explain the absence of minorities or indigenous people in our various prisons, SO underproportionate to their percentage of the population, while Jeffrey Archer served FOREVER in onerous conditions like going home for a champagne lunch with friends every week — under the supervision, of course, of a guard, who ate in the kitchen with the help.
What world do you live in? You’re so blinkered you should be running at Melbourne Park.
Ask not for whom the bell curves…
the punitive approach can *seem* like the way to go and yet the statistics stack up in favour of rehabilitation.
Absolutely.
This is pretty grim. Bravo to his victims for holding him to account.
His victims didn’t hold him to account; most of them didn’t even know about it before he was arrested. It was the police and the courts which held him to account for his completely bizarre behaviour.
Bullshit and balls, they absolutely held him to account once they discovered what was going on. Read some of the victim accounts.
I thought Woolf was engaged by (Directors of Studies in Music at) various Cambridge Colleges to supervise undergraduates, and was not working directly for the University. Strictly speaking, then, it should be the relevant Colleges who are approached for comment.
Could you explain what this means? Did you know him or just of him?
Huh? Cambridge University is a collection of colleges. Someone can be employed by the university, or by one (or more) of the colleges. All the post says is that Woolf was not employed directly by the university, but instead had a college job.
The University has released a statement, confirming that Woolf was never employed “in a teaching capacity” by the Faculty of Music, but was engaged by one College to supervise undergraduates. The College in question has not been named, “as it could lead to the identification of innocent individuals”, which sounds like a plausible reason, given that most Colleges would have fewer than a dozen music undergraduates (across all years of study) at a given time.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/notices/news/statement-regarding-alexander-woolf
Were the stolen faces his students, colleagues? Looking for motive.
“All of the women were acquaintances of Woolf.” from the UK Daily Mail.
Thank you for posting, it shouldn’t be under estimated how much damage this sort of thing causes to victims lives.
Such a shame for GPO. Their investment is lost.
https://www.facebook.com/scalaradiouk/videos/watch-london-mozart-players-bassoonist-play-a-charming-new-piece-written-by-comp/311924016564218/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzuB6yzmpQI
https://grangeparkopera.co.uk/whats-on/a-feast-in-the-time-of-plague-2/
Very thin stuff.
Why did I know you’d be here posting about his talent?
You seem to believe in expertise. Good for you!
Thin gruel indeed.
Welcome to the club, kiddo.
Georg Friedrich Haas
So he’s taking random strangers’ pictures and adding false accusations. I wonder what was the thought process that made him think that was a good idea.
£100 per victim doesn’t sound like much but in the US this would be nearly unprosecutable.
They weren’t random strangers they people he knew and many considered him a friend. One victim suffered abuse for 5 years before it all came out
We have revenge porn laws in most states now. I believe his actions would be in violation of those.
Except there was no action for which Woolf was taking revenge. That is what makes it so bizarre.
Not random. They were people he knew.
Surely it should have been called the “Our NHS Symphony”.
Anyway, another day, another nonce at the BBC.
he should of had a custodial
sentence. a few months in the pokey
“Should have,” please.
The trouble is Iam a dyslexic agnostic.
What I can’t fathom is how someone with the world at his feet, starry commissions coming out of his ears, who writes bland, musically highly- competent but effectively-written music (he was clearly very well taught) would consider himself so entitled, so above the rule of law (or just morality) to imagine that the rules for other people simply don’t apply to him. Then screw up his life and a promising career in this way through having too much time on his hands – the proverbial sad computer-bound incel I guess. I suspect that there will be not a little schadenfreude among this country’s young composers right now.
Schadenfreude indeed. I had no idea how he got where he did with such mediocre music and, while it’s awful that it took him victimising 15+ women to manage it, I’m delighted he’s torpedoed his career.
Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.