Violin teacher raped former student, court hears

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/violin-teacher-raped-former-student-court-hears

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A violin teacher abused his power and influence to rape a pupil from a world-renowned music school in Manchester, a court has heard.

Malcolm Layfield, former head of strings at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) and a one-time violin tutor at Chetham’s school of music in Manchester, admits having “inappropriate sexual relationships” with a number of his former students, including the rape complainant, a jury at Manchester crown court was told.

But the 63-year-old denies raping her in the back of his car at a summer camp in the early 1980s, when she was 18 and he was a married father in his early 30s.

Layfield’s alleged victim claims the rape took place the summer she left Chetham’s, where she had been a boarder.

Opening the case for the prosecution, Peter Cadwallader told the jury that the case involved “abuse of power”. Layfield was a “fine teacher with power and influence” who taught “highly gifted” and ambitious students, said the barrister.

“It is alleged, in short, that he used his power and influence improperly. He admits that he had inappropriate sexual relationships with a number of his former students. [The complainant, who cannot be named,] was one such student,” said Cadwallader, adding: “It will be a matter for you to consider whether there was something of the casting couch involved.”

In a police video interview played to the jury, the complainant described how Layfield groomed her by offering her lifts back from rehearsals. During the journey, he would confide in her about an affair he was having with a woman in London. “He asked me whether he should tell his wife. I was the confidante,” the witness said. “He did this, very calculated, so I was the person he would talk to.”

He would also make inappropriate remarks during their lessons, once commenting that she looked like she had “no clothes on” when she turned up in white dungarees.

Layfield also acted as a “father figure”. But he had a reputation for lavishing inappropriate attention on female pupils, said the woman. Chetham’s, said the complainant, was a place where supervision was “wholly inadequate” and children “ran riot”.

The woman described the evening leading up to the alleged rape at a summer camp in Cornwall where he plied her with whiskey. It was organised by Layfield and his wife at a cottage where they were staying with their young children.

After going to bed, she remembers waking up hearing Layfield saying “let’s get [her] up” and pulling her out of her sleeping bag with the help of two male pupils. She then recalled him driving her “to the middle of nowhere” and forcing himself on her in the back seat of the car. She described trying to pull away from him as he used his strength to rape her, before driving them back to the cottage, where his wife was up and making breakfast for his children.

Later that year, he would have sex with her after drinks at a college bar, usually in the back of his car in an abandoned car park. Once he instigated sex in the front room of his house in Didsbury, south Manchester, while his wife and children were home, she said. He was “disgusting”, the woman said, insisting that while she consented on these later occasions, she never wanted to sleep with him but felt she had to.

“He called it an affair. But it wasn’t an affair. There was no affection, no romance. It was him abusing his power to get sex. That’s what it was,” she said. “He was only interested in his own career and getting on in the music business.”

She said he once threatened to stop her getting freelance work as a musician and said she felt humiliated by being “Malcolm’s bit on the side”.

The court heard the woman first made an official complaint about Layfield in 2001, when he was promoted to head of strings at the RNCM. She described writing a letter to the then principal, Edward Gregson, telling him what Layfield had done to her and others and urging him to reconsider the appointment.

Layfield got the job and only resigned in February 2013 after Greater Manchester police began investigating him for rape.

The case continues.