EX-MUSIC TEACHER FACES 49 CHARGES OF SEX ASSAULT

CHARLES DUTOIT

A former Calgary music teacher accused in May of using a false identity on social media to meet young girls faces dozens of sexual abuse charges after 19 more girls came forward. Christian Allen Sarile faces 49 charges involving 22 girls. Police believe the offences happened between 2009 and this month. “The numbers are alarming and it’s been a pattern of behaviour,” Calgary police Staff Sgt. Melanie Oncescu said Thursday. “It’s certainly the largest in terms of charges laid that I’ve been involved with.” Sarile, 27, is accused of posing as a teenage boy on social media and would offer girls cash or goods in exchange for sexual favours, Oncescu said. The allegations include instances of victims sending photos of themselves clothed, partly clothed or naked. He is in custody and will appear in court Friday on charges of sexual assault, sexual interference, extortion, invitation to sexual touching, communicating for the purpose of obtaining sexual services, making sexually explicit material available to a child and luring a child under the age of 16.

SANFRANCISCO • Worldrenowned conductor Charles Dutoit, who had a 25-year run with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, is accused of sexually assaulting four female musicians in the United States.

In separate interviews with The Associated Press, three opera singers and a classical musician provided detailed accounts of incidents they say occurred with the Swiss-born conductor between 1985 and 2010 in a moving car, the twotime Grammy winner’s hotel suite, his dressing room, an elevator and the darkness of backstage.

The women accuse the 81- year- old artistic director and principal conductor of London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of sexual misconduct on the sidelines of rehearsals and performances in five cities — Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia and Saratoga Springs, New York.

“He threw me against the wall, shoved my hand down his pants and shoved his tongue down my throat,” retired mezzo- soprano Paula Rasmussen recounted of an incident she said occurred in his dressing room at the LA Opera in September 1991. She refused to ever be alone with him again, she said.

Soprano Sylvia McNair, herself a two-time Grammy winner, said Dutoit “tried to have his way” with her at a hotel after a rehearsal with the Minnesota Orchestra in 1985. “As soon as it was just the two of us in the elevator, Charles Dutoit pushed me back against the elevator wall and pressed his knee way up between my legs and pressed himself all over me,” said McNair.

Former director of Montreal symphony