As sentencing nears for violinist, four women say he sexually abused them while at UNC school

A former University of North Carolina School of the Arts faculty member is scheduled to be sentenced in Michigan Thursday in a child sex trafficking case related to a former student.

In seeking prison time, prosecutors are citing interviews with four women who Stephen Shipps taught years earlier while a professor at the elite UNC arts campus. The violinist sexually abused each of them while they were teenagers, the women say.

Shipps, who worked at UNCSA from 1980 until the University of Michigan hired him in 1989, was a brazen abuser known for sexually assaulting students during lessons, the women told prosecutors.

Even without surviving official reports, anyone who studied or worked at the renowned conservatory during Shipps’ tenure would’ve known, according to a sentencing memo federal prosecutors filed Tuesday.

In a case concluding in Michigan, Shipps faces prison time after pleading guilty to one federal charge of transporting an underage student across state lines to engage in sexual relations.

Former UNCSA students told federal prosecutors that the school was just one step in Shipps’ decades-long stint of leveraging violin careers to prey on young musicians.

One woman was 16 when she enrolled under Shipps, according to a memo that federal prosecutors filed Tuesday. He had her babysit for his family, and eventually twisted their relationship into a sexual one, she said.

The girl worried that UNCSA would expel her if she spoke up, according to the memo.

Another woman was 17 when Shipps started touching and kissing her after rehearsals, according to the memo, and demanded that she touch him as well. It became a regular part of their lessons.

But when she stayed briefly at his home, Shipps invited her to his bed and tried to have sex with her, she told prosecutors. The girl refused, and stayed in her room at the house for the next 24 hours.

A third woman, who said she studied under Shipps at UNCSA and at his previous job, recalled him asking her for a kiss while driving her home. He escalated his advances and, when she was 15 or 16 years old, touched her and told her that it was “tragic” that they couldn’t have sex, prosecutors allege in the memo. They were having sex by the time she turned 18, she said.

The fourth woman described both abuse and trafficking from Shipps.

She was 17 when the teacher invited her to stay with him over spring break and had sex with her, according to the memo.

At one point Shipps sent her to a Wisconsin colleague for supplemental lessons, she said. The other teacher plied her with alcohol, chased her around his house and raped her, according to the memo. He also stole her shoes and clothes so that she couldn’t escape the home.

The woman told prosecutors that she believes Shipps coordinated the assault.

Prosecutors are asking the court to lock Shipps away for 68 months. As part of his plea agreement, Shipps conceded to a sentence between 57 and 71 months. Prosecutors petitioned for the higher end of that range because Shipps was in a position of power over his victim in the federal court case, and she was only 15 when he first made advances on her.

While federal authorities didn’t arrest Stephen Shipps until 2020, the crimes for which they charged him date back to 2002, before Congress instituted a 10-year minimum prison sentence for federal child sex trafficking. So there’s no legal minimum or maximum punishment.

And though Shipps claimed that he stopped abusing students after 2002, his attorney admitted in a memo that his client had a habit of molesting young violinists until then. He hasn’t been charged in any other cases.

North Carolina law doesn’t require UNCSA to preserve most decades-old staff records. The school said in 2018 that it had no surviving reports of allegations against Shipps, according to a report from The Michigan Daily.

Since then, records from a 1995 UNC system investigation uncovered by reporters revealed eight complaints against him, and three women accused him of sex abuse in a 2021 lawsuit.

“UNCSA condemns the alleged actions by Stephen Shipps,” school spokeswoman Katherine Johnson wrote in a Wednesday statement. “The accounts described by our alumni are disturbing and run counter to the institutional values we hold.”

One alumna, Stephanie Silverman, wrote a letter to the court about Shipps’ “extraordinary, tenacious, decades-long track record of abuse” asking them to sentence him to the longest prison term possible. His actions had herded her classmate into a serious eating disorder and pattern of self-harm, and made it impossible to play her once-beloved violin.

Shipps never abused Silverman but preyed on at least three of her classmates, she wrote, and nothing changed when she told adults about it.

The victim who told prosecutors of her experience with Shipps decades later “ is providing a measure of closure to the many talented women Steve Shipps targeted and harmed and the loved ones who witnessed what his predation did to destroy the lives of those he targeted,” Silverman wrote.

This story was originally published April 13, 2022 at 4:48 PM with the headline "As sentencing nears for violinist, four women say he sexually abused them while at UNC school."