Violinist Stephen Shipps Receives Five Year Jail Sentence

 

Today, Thursday, April 14, former violin pedagogue Stephen Shipps was sentenced in Detroit, Michigan by U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood.

According to sources present at the courthouse, Shipps will receive 5 years of jail time. He has also agreed to pay $120,000 restitution and spend three years on supervised release, as reported by the Detroit News. The sentencing is short of the 68-months prosecutors had asked for.

 

 

Shipps, now 69, was indicted in 2020 on two charges. He pled guilty to one of them in November 2021, which entailed transporting a girl under the age of 18 across state lines to engage in sexual activity in 2002.

The indictment and arrest came two years after allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct were leveled at him by a number of past students.

Shipps formerly taught at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts (UNCSA) from 1980, until the University of Michigan hired him in 1989. He served at the University of Michigan, and was Faculty Director of the University's Strings Preparatory Academy pre-college program, until his retirement in 2019.

He also held positions at Indiana University, the University of Nebraska–Omaha, and the Banff Centre in Canada.

Some of the first accusations against Shipps were published in the Michigan Daily campus newspaper in December 2018 —which included reports by numerous female students of unwelcome touching, sexual assault, and maintaining prolonged sexual relations with teenage students.

 

 

Shipps is also named as a defendant in a lawsuit against UNCSA, alleging he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl while serving as a violin professor. As reported by the Winston-Salem Journal, Shipps' reputation was known and he was allowed to quietly resign.

The lawsuit revealed that UNCSA officials provided recommendations that helped Shipps get the job at the University of Michigan.

Former UNCSA student and survivor of Shipps' misconduct,  Lisamarie Vana, was present at the sentencing today. Her sister Therese Vana, friend and fellow UNCSA classmate Stephanie Silverman, reporter Sammy Sussman, and violinist Lara St John were also present.

“I am glad there is jail time, though it’s not enough,” said violinist Lara St John, who is also a survivor of vile sexual misconduct whilst a conservatory student at the Curtis Institute of Music in the 1980s.