$12.5 Million Settlement for 65 UNC School of the Arts Alumni in Decades-Long Sexual Abuse Case

The University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem operated a residential high school alongside its four-year college programs, placing young students directly in the care of faculty members for years at a time. Beginning as early as the late 1960s, some of those faculty members used that access to groom and abuse students, some as young as 12 years old. Allegations included sexual touching, attempted and completed sexual intercourse, and the provision of alcohol to minors. School administrators and fellow faculty, according to the lawsuit, turned a willful blind eye to conduct that continued across five decades.

The case became possible through North Carolina's 'Safe Child Act,' which opened a two-year window for survivors of childhood sexual abuse to bring civil claims that would otherwise be time-barred. The lawsuit was filed in Forsyth County in September 2021, initially by seven former students; it grew to 65 named plaintiffs as survivors came forward. Approximately 35 to 40 additional victims were contacted but declined to participate. The defendants included nearly 20 individuals, mostly former employees, some of them deceased, along with the UNC System and the School of the Arts as institutions.

Attorneys Lisa Lanier and Bobby Jenkins of Lanier Law Group represented the plaintiffs throughout the proceedings. The firm argued that institutional inaction, not just individual misconduct, caused harm to generations of students, and pressed that claim through two years of litigation before reaching a resolution.

The settlement, announced May 17, 2024, totals $12.5 million: $10 million from the UNC System and $2.5 million from the School of the Arts, paid out over four years. An independent allocator was appointed to distribute the funds among surviving claimants, with first payments scheduled for early September 2024. No criminal charges were filed against any of the named defendants. UNCSA Chancellor Brian Cole acknowledged the settlement as the conclusion of 'a decades-long journey' for former students and stated a commitment to 'listening, acknowledging, and doing right by them.'