“Boy toy.” “Twice my age.” “Damaged forever.” Those are three phrases Interlochen School of the Arts alumni used to describe their experiences with sexual abuse while attending the Michigan school in the 1970s.
For nearly 100 years, arts students from around the state and the world have packed their bags and tried to make a name for themselves at Interlochen, a prestigious Up North institution.
One girl, 15, moved from a different country, where she was a big fish in a small pond, to perfect her musical craft. What she didn’t know was that interactions with the symphony orchestra conductor would change her life. Or that she would find out, 48 years later, that she was not the only person who had said they were sexually abused at the school.
The Free Press spoke with two former students about their experience with sexual abuse at the school. In addition to the woman who said she was abused by a conductor, a man told the Free Press he was assaulted by a trustee, one of the most powerful leadership roles at Interlochen. The Detroit Free Press generally does not name people who are victims of sexual abuse.
Interlochen hired Sanghavi Law Office in 2024 to conduct an independent investigation into alleged misconduct “after alumni concerns came to light,” according to a letter from Interlochen President Trey Devey released on July 28 with the investigation report. The report revealed that about 50 adults in leadership roles are accused of sexually abusing and exploiting at least 70 former students. Two accounts are tied to notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Both the report and Devey’s letter say that most of the allegations stem from encounters before 2000. In recent years, Interlochen has doubled down on safety protocols, such as rigorous background checks, clear professional boundary standards, multiple reporting pathways for those with concerns, coordinated supervision of students and independent assessments of policies, according to the letter.
“Interlochen today is fundamentally different from the institution described in this report,” Devey wrote in his letter.
The report is the “first step towards justice for the survivors who have carried this trauma for decades,” said Matthew Curtis, senior shareholder at Sommers Schwartz, P.C., and the attorney for numerous sexual abuse survivors who attended Interlochen, including the two with whom the Free Press spoke.
“This report confirms what these survivors have known all along, and it makes clear that what happened at Interlochen was real, that it mattered, and that it demands a response,” Curtis said in a statement to the Free Press on Tuesday.
The survivors the Free Press spoke with said Interlochen has made positive changes, but that steps forward don’t change the past.
“That’s great. Wonderful. But probably 50 years too late. What good does that do for me?” said the woman, who is now in her 60s. “I can’t un-experience and unlive the things that happened during a time when my personality, psyche, self-esteem were still being forged in the crucible of adolescence and damaged forever.”
‘The guy was twice my age’
The woman described herself as a shy and vulnerable teenager at the time when the symphony orchestra conductor Byron Hanson, who is named in the report released by Interlochen, began to make her feel singled out and special. She and another student, with whom she had her first kiss, had recently broken things off, and she was struggling with the pressure and highly competitive atmosphere she felt at school, she said.
“I thought he was in love with me. I think I had a crush on him. And when you have that kind of power imbalance when you’re 16 years old, you say, ‘Oh, I’m a grown-up already, yay!’ ” she said. “But absolutely not. The guy was twice my age, literally. He knew what he was doing, but I didn’t really see it that way. I thought, yeah, we’re two adults. But he was very much the one driving the bus.”
Hanson died in 2021. Family members for Hanson did not immediately respond to Free Press request for comment on him being named in the report.
Hanson often accompanied student soloists on piano and practiced with them one-on-one. His office was in the basement of the girls’ dormitory. It was common for students to go to teachers’ homes for dinners or on holidays, and she first went to the conductor’s house with a group. She went on to go to his house several more times and stayed in his bed, she said.
“These are not the kind of injuries that one can see,” the female survivor said. “If I’d been badly burned in a fire in the dormitory that was negligence and was disfigured for life, people would say, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s really bad.’ But I’m living in a nice house. I’m not a heroin addict on the street. But that doesn’t mean that injuries (aren’t there).”
By her second and senior year at Interlochen, she was barely passing classes with D’s after a history of straight-A grades. As her classmates were auditioning for top-tier colleges like Juilliard, she ended up going back home for college.
“I think anybody who thought about it for more than five seconds would have realized something was really, really wrong. And they should have supported me, they should have said, ‘What’s going on?’ ”
Teenage ‘boy toy’
Another survivor, who attended Interlochen from out of state from 1974 to 1978, told the Free Press he was a sophomore when former Board Chair Charles McWhorter, who is named in the report, first abused him at the hotel within the school’s Stone Student Center.
“It was a very confusing thing for me because by nature I’m heterosexual, so what was happening just twisted my head. I grew up kind of like stiff upper lip, grin and bear it, deal with it. I was taught to deal with things. And who do I turn to at 15 years of age, 16 years, when (it’s) the chairman of the board?” he said. “I was too embarrassed to even call my parents. I was ashamed.”
McWhorter went on to invite and fly him out to his penthouse apartment in New York City approximately 10-12 times and sexually abuse the boy over the course of three years, the survivor said. McWhorter took the boy to philharmonic concerts and parties.
“I’m a kid. I’m dependent on him. He would take me around to New York Philharmonic concerts. I remember he asked me to get dressed up one time. … He said I looked nice and paraded me around kind of like a boy toy. It’s what I felt like.”
The physical relationship ended shortly after he graduated, though they stayed in contact throughout McWhorter’s life, sending birthday and Christmas cards, the survivor said.
McWhorter died in 1999. He underwrote the cost of a rehearsal hall, winterized the lodge, fitness center, recreational halls, auditorium, studio and renovation of on-site summer cabins at Interlochen, according to his obituary.
Interlochen changed the name of McWhorter Hall, named for him, after the report was released on Tuesday.
‘Loosey-goosey environment’
Going off-campus of the rural small school with a teacher to their home or restaurants was not unheard of, the survivors recounted. They said there were some rules about signing out and what you could and could not do, but “it was not strict,” the woman in her 60s said.
Though there were resident advisers and a lot of highly motivated and talented students and staff, “there just was very lax oversight of the kids,” the man said. He remembered the smell of marijuana, which was illegal in Michigan in the ’70s, in the boys’ dormitories and students sneaking out, as a minor, to buy beer.
“It was just a very loosey-goosey environment,” he said.
Sexual abuse wasn’t something students at the camp talked about, the woman said.
“I wouldn’t say that there was a culture of this is commonplace, and everybody knows, and it’s all condoned. It was, like, a closely guarded secret at the time, and for me, continuing for decades,” she said.
Why come forward now
After graduating from Interlochen, the female survivor moved back home. Her dad found her journal detailing the relationship with her teacher and almost sent a letter to the school before her mom stopped him, worried it would ruin Hanson’s career.
Her parents died years ago, and Hanson died in 2021. She said she knows people will wonder why she didn’t say anything for so long.
“It’s actually a testimony to how much I wanted to just lock this whole thing away that I didn’t find the energy or determination to confront them,” she said. “Believing that it was only something that affected me, I kind of thought that there was not really any good that could come of it, that I would be brushed aside, you know, he’s dead, your story against his.”
Allegations against Hanson reported by a former attendee to administrators in 2024 prompted the entire investigation. The investigation found seven female attendees accused Hanson of sexual misconduct.
Between June 2025 and January 2026, the school sent several emails to the community, including faculty, staff, current families, and alums for whom the school had current contact information, to inform them of the external investigation and invite their participation, according to the report.
Around this time, alumni and survivors began to connect on Facebook, and numerous individuals got in touch with attorney Matthew Curtis, a lawyer for many of the survivors.
Michigan has a statute of limitation for different degrees of sexual misconduct. Curtis said it’s unfortunate that “current Michigan law denies them access to justice.”
“We hope that, in light of this recent report, the Michigan state Legislature will move quickly to pass legislation that would allow survivors to pursue justice through our civil courts, as they deserve a chance to be heard,” he said in the statement. “The impact on the physical and mental well-being of these survivors has been overwhelming. It took a lot of courage for these individuals to relive the horrors that were bestowed upon them during their formative years at Interlochen. Interlochen needs to step up and do what is right for these survivors.”
Ahead of the release of the report, the male survivor told the Free Press justice from the school would look like being validated by the school through acknowledgement that it happened and an appropriate apology. He said he’s not opposed to financial compensation for treatment required to help heal and the time it has taken to work through what happened to him.
“The concept, the inspiration for Interlochen is a fantastic one. It just has to be operated; it has to be executed properly, ethically,” he said. “I think it’s very possible for them to clean up their act. Absolutely. It just takes leadership with a backbone.”
Free Press staff writer Dave Boucher contributed to this report.
Contact Natalie Davies at ndavies@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Interlochen alumni speak out after report details decades of abuse
Reporting by Natalie Davies, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Natalie Davies, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
