Interlochen Center for the Arts released the full findings of an outside investigation on Tuesday, and the report says 47 individuals associated with the school are accused of sexual misconduct with students. The findings turn a decadeslong record into a case file local authorities can review, while leaving most of the accused unnamed.
180 interviews at Interlochen
Sanghavi Law Office was hired after an individual reached out in 2024 to report an incident from decades earlier, then conducted 180 interviews and collected approximately 70 firsthand reports from alums. The firm documented alleged abuse between the 1950s and the 2010s, with most of the abuse described in the report occurring prior to 2000 and only a few reported incidents in the last 25 years.
The report describes “a range of behavior by adults affiliated with Interlochen, some of which included grooming, flirting, comments of a sexual nature, touching of a sexual nature, vaginal intercourse, anal intercourse, oral intercourse, and engaging in long-term ‘relationships,’” and says the conduct occurred in faculty houses, on-campus buildings, cars, school-related trips, non-school related trips, a lake close to Interlochen, on-campus bathrooms, and residence hall rooms.
47 accused, 17 deceased
The firm said the accused included arts faculty members, academic teachers including visiting instructors, residence life staff members, donors, trustees, and visitors. Seventeen of the 47 accused individuals are now deceased, and none of the accused individuals are employed by Interlochen today.
That leaves the report with a sharp split between accountability and identification: the school says the majority of accused individuals have not been identified, even as the file names 47 people tied to the campus. For affected alums, that means the record is public enough to show scale but still incomplete enough to keep many allegations from being traced to a person.
Jeffrey Epstein at Interlochen
Six alums met with investigators about Jeffrey Epstein, and two of them reported that he engaged in physical contact of a sexual nature with them. One alum said he brushed against her inappropriately while on the Interlochen campus. Epstein was a donor from 1990 to 2003, funded scholarships and the construction of a named lodge, and Interlochen renamed that lodge Green Lake Lodge in 2009.
Interlochen demolished Green Lake Lodge last month after authorities were invited to photograph its exterior and interior “for any future evidentiary use” before it was destroyed. The report now places those records, the donor history, and the abuse claims in the same review file.
Grand Traverse review
Interlochen said the full list of accused individuals was turned over to the Grand Traverse Sheriff’s Office and Grand Traverse County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office for review. That handoff is the practical next step for anyone watching this closely: the school has moved the file out of its own process and into the local system that can decide whether anything else follows.
Victims described loss of academic interest, ongoing PTSD, years of therapy, impacts on personal relationships, and career disruption, and some said they stopped playing music or gave up pursuing the performing arts. The report gives those accounts a formal record; what comes next depends on how the list is handled now.
