Internationally-acclaimed Macclesfield conductor jailed for indecent assault

Internationally-acclaimed conductor Nicholas Smith, formerly of Macclesfield, now living in Malestroit, Brittany, France, has been jailed for eight months for indecently assaulting a teenage girl .

Smith’s victim went to police 36 years after the assault following the high-profile death of sex attack victim Frances Andrade, a fellow pupil at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester.

Smith, 66, was investigated in the aftermath of Mrs Andrade’s death during last year’s sex abuse trial of Michael Brewer, the former music director at Chetham’s.

Mrs Andrade killed herself at her home in Guildford, Surrey, a week after giving evidence against him.

Smith’s victim told police the death of Mrs Andrade, whom she knew while at the school, was like the ‘curtain of a stage lifted’.

The indecent assault by Smith when his victim was aged 15 and he was 30, took ‘minutes’ but ruined her life, Minshull Street Crown Court heard.

Smith, a visiting conductor at Chetham’s in the 1970s, at first denied the sex attack but later admitted one count of indecent assault against his vulnerable victim, now in her 50s, on a date between 1976 and 1978, at his country cottage in Derbyshire.

Smith went on to become an internationally-renowned conductor working across the world but his reputation now lies in ruins, the court heard.

Jailing him for eight months, Judge Peter Lakin told Smith: ‘You breached the trust placed in you in a most serious way. She was highly vulnerable and you knew it.

‘When you were alone with her, you cynically took advantage of her vulnerability and subjected her to a deeply unpleasant and frightening ordeal.

Full story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2739947/Royal-Philharmonic-conductor-jailed-groping-gifted-teenage-cellist-country-cottage-wife-having-bath-upstairs.html