An East Lothian music teacher that had been imprisoned for raping and abusing one of their pupils has been revealed as a close friend of one of the country’s best known paedophiles.
Peter Antonelli, 66, from Gullane, is understood to have adopted the same vile tactics as those used by his old flatmate and fellow teacher Christopher Ling.
Ling was accused of assaulting ten girls at a music school in England.
A victim of Antonelli’s heinous crime has said that she met Ling when he came north of the border and that the notorious paedophile made a number of obscene comments to her and another student.
Antonelli is understood to have abused six victims through his crimes.
Both Ling and Antonelli who were together at London’s Royal College of Music in the past, would often groom their pupils and force them to wear lingerie and perform sex acts as the creeps snapped photographs.
They were known to also manipulate their victims so that they would not tell anyone of the abuse they were suffering at the hands of a teacher, the Daily Record revealed.
Grace – not her real name – gave evidence against piano teacher Antonelli last year and said Ling referred to his pal’s pupils as “the rides of the future.”
Ling, who was living in the US, shot himself in the head in 2015 just minutes before police arrived at his home to extradite him back to the UK to face 77 sex offence charges against pupils at Chetham’s School of Music.
Campaigner Dr Ian Pace, a pianist who has worked to expose historical abuse between students and teachers in specialist music schools, described the perverts’ links as “very significant.”
He said: “It would be of interest to compare their modus operandi. How exactly they used their techniques for manipulating, cajoling and then abusing pupils under their care.
“Ling appears to have had his sort of abuse down to a type of art form, as he would have seen it.”
The BBC Scotland show Disclosure: Abused By My Teacher – which screens on BBC1 at 10.40pm tomorrow – tells the stories of the survivors who brought Antonelli to justice.
And it reveals the current loopholes in the regulation of children’s performing arts in Scotland.
Grace was one of the teacher and musical director’s earliest victims.
She was just 10 years old when he started working at her primary school.
Antonelli – who was awarded an MBE in 2004 for his services to musical education – abused her at a time when she was facing difficulties at home and her ordeal began on the day of her grandmother’s funeral when she was just 14 and continued for the next five years.
Grace was 15 and with another 13-year-old victim when she met Ling.
She said: “Ling said to Antonelli, ‘Look at these girls, they’re the rides of the future.’”
Grace had seen many photographs of other girls in Antonelli’s flat and believes that the pictures were passed around to other people.
Another victim, Emma, said she had been sexually abused by Antonelli from the late 90s until 2005 and had kept the secret hidden for two decades.
She had been taught by him at school and was also in a musical theatre group he ran called Musical Youth.
The women reveal why they decided to go to the police and why they are determined to pursue the case after so many years.
Emma said: “I wanted justice for myself, I wanted justice for other women and I want him to not be able to do this to other children ever again, and he can’t.”
Grace said: “I wanted a quiet life. But actually you can only run away for so long and then you’ve got to turn and face it. So that’s what I had to do.”
