32 more alums sue UNC School of the Arts; list of faculty accused of sexual abuse grows

More alumni of North Carolina’s most celebrated arts school have filed a lawsuit saying they were sexually abused while enrolled, with 39 former students now accusing the university of negligence.

Newly accused University of North Carolina School of the Arts faculty members include a violinist who recently agreed to plead guilty to federal trafficking charges, a professor who publicly criticized the school’s handling of previous abuse cases, and one of the nation’s most famed ballerinas.

An original seven plaintiffs filed a joint complaint earlier this year, accusing school leadership of ignoring evidence that former staff members were sexually abusing students in the 1980s. They described decades of emotional turmoil in the years since, eliciting an apology from current school leaders.

The new filings make allegations of abuse as recent as the 2010s, including several in which students said school staff acknowledged the abuse but didn’t publicly punish perpetrators.

Attorneys for the case, including celebrity lawyer Gloria Allred and personal injury specialists Lisa Lanier and Bobby Jenkins, solicited more defendants upon filing a complaint earlier this year. Jenkins said they will continue to seek class action certification against UNCSA and plan to add more plaintiffs as they come forward.

Leadership at the elite Winston-Salem school, which offers both high school and college programs at its conservatories, said in a written response Monday that the allegations are “deeply disturbing” and “run counter to the university’s institutional values.”

“The current administration intends to respond to this litigation by listening to the accounts with openness, appreciating the courage it took for our alumni to share their experiences, and taking steps to acknowledge and address any historical sexual misconduct with candor and compassion,” the statement reads.

It’s not the first time the school has contended with a sex scandal. One of the plaintiffs had sued the school in 1995 and sparked an inquiry into the “culture of abuse” that he described on campus. But an investigation by The Charlotte Observer and News & Observer showed that none of two dozen staff members who had been accused of sexual abuse and improper relationships with students were disciplined as a result of the probe.

Several of the staff members accused in the latest lawsuit had been named in that inquiry, but continued to work at the school even after allegations against them surfaced.

Perhaps the most famous is the late Melissa Hayden, a celebrated ballerina who’d been accused in the previous lawsuit of hitting and berating students, as well as telling female students they couldn’t succeed as dancers without having sex to relax their movements.

Four plaintiffs in the new suit accused the former New York City Ballet dancer, who died in 2006, of inviting dancers to her home where her husband, Don Coleman, gave them alcohol and had students strip naked to perform for him. Coleman signed some students out of the dorms for the weekend without their parents permission, the complaint alleges.

Two plaintiffs, who were dating at the time, said Coleman pressured them to have sex in his home then took the condom as a souvenir.

At least two students who enrolled in the 1990s reported the couple to the school and police, they said in the complaint, prompting the chancellor to ban Coleman from campus. But he returned a week later to watch their rehearsals, one plaintiff said, and told her “I own this school” when confronted.

Another woman, who was 15 when she enrolled in 1969, said she was so naive that she didn’t realize one of her professors was grooming her for abuse. Gyula Pandi, who in 1995 would go on to call the school out for ignoring his reports that other teachers were molesting young students, would go on to grope the plaintiff on school trips and have sex with her at his home, the plaintiff said in her complaint.

Students also accused acting professor Bob Murray of harassing and dating several teenage girls, and one said that she complained to the school when he sexually assaulted her. The school’s attorney didn’t advise her to file complaints with the school or local police, she said, but did pass on a paper from Murray’s attorney. It was an agreement not to sue him.

Two more plaintiffs said that violin teacher Stephen Shipps sexually abused them when they were his students in the 1980s, including one who said he’d bought her a ticket to study under violinist Jerry Horner in Wisconsin. She said Horner drugged and raped her, then said Shipps had sent her as an “appeasement offering” after having an affair with Horner’s wife.

When the girl’s mother told the school, Shipps left UNCSA and took a job in Michigan, where he would go on to face federal charges of trafficking a minor for sex. He agreed this month to plead guilty, according to court records.

Another plaintiff, who said three different teachers raped her when she was a student, remembered Shipps encouraging her husband to come teach at UNCSA where he could “f#*k any girl you want,” according to the complaint.

More recent complaints include that of a student who enrolled in 2008 and said ballet teacher Nigel Burley sexually assaulted her during a private Pilates session. Another teacher told her that staff “all know about it and there is nothing we can do” and suggested she leave the school, the former student wrote in the lawsuit.

Another student, who said she had never kissed a boy before she enrolled at age 16 in 2011, accused drama teacher Kelly Maxner of forcing students to kiss each other and perform a dance “with the express instruction to seduce their professor” -- even after another student’s parents complained about his behavior. But he continued to teach, the complaint alleges, and was able to retaliate against the students whose parents notified the school.

Maxner once told her that she “had a sweet face, and it might be the reason that someday she gets raped,” she wrote in the complaint.

While many of the complaints would normally be too old to sue over, the lawsuit made possible by a two-year window in which North Carolina’s usual restrictions on lawsuits about child sex abuse don’t apply.

After Dec. 31, sex abuse survivors hoping to sue in civil court will generally need to do so by age 28.

Defendants in similar cases have argued that the resurrected opportunity for lawsuits is unconstitutional, an assertion that a panel of North Carolina judges is currently weighing. But until their decision comes down, plaintiffs have continued filing new cases, including one against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte.

Correction: An early version of this article misstated the number of additional alumni suing North Carolina School of the Arts alleging they were sexual abused. The correct number is 32.

This story was originally published November 29, 2021 at 6:03 PM with the headline "32 more alums sue UNC School of the Arts; list of faculty accused of sexual abuse grows."