Sex, Lies & Audiotapes: How New York's Establishment Protected Revered Opera Maestro James Levine From Sex Abuse Claims
March 17 2021, Updated 12:54 p.m. ET
This is the harrowing sex abuse story The New Yorker asked to be written, but declined to publish — and haunted a New York Times journalist who refused to "pile on" against one of the city's most prominent figures.
IN THE SUMMER of 2013, after suffering more decades of sexual abuse at the hands of one of the most powerful music conductors in the world, a traumatized Ashok "Shoky" Pai hit breaking point.
Through intense therapy, a series of gut-wrenching, realizations surfaced: Shoky, then 45, recalled how as a teenager in 1986, as a violin, piano and conducting student he had been subjected to prolonged and humiliating abuse by one of the stars of the classical music world, who would force him to strip naked and submit to mutual [expletive].
That conductor was James Levine, 74, who until earlier this month was the Metropolitan Opera music director emeritus. It was part of Shoky's "professional development," Levine reportedly convinced him at the time.
Haunted by the trauma, Shoky wanted justice — and he wanted the world to hear the truth about Levine. He went to the police and lodged a formal complaint, and began the hunt for a journalist to tell his story of sex abuse.
The resulting three-year battle to achieve any kind of justice can now be told. And according to dozens of pages of documents, emails, a police report, and interviews with multiple people directly involved in the scandal, the story of Ashok Pai and James Levine is an extraordinary tale of abuse of power, position and stolen innocence.
It also raises serious questions about how two of the country's most revered journalistic institutions, The New Yorker and The New York Times — presently and rightfully being lauded for their roles in sparking the national discussion about gender and power — closed ranks to protect one of the city's most powerful men.
Reporters at both media outlets, despite the evidence and repeated allegations of further abuse, as well as personal pleas by Shoky, were, it seems, not prepared to investigate an alleged pedophile – perhaps because it looked unseemly to do so, or because they feared offending the great and good of the Metropolitan Opera.
SHOKY, TODAY AGED 49, began playing the violin at age four and the piano at age six. He went on to conducting orchestras when he was just 14. As a child, his parents would take him to the Chicago Symphony in the summers at the Ravinia Festival where he met Levine.
"I ran backstage with my mother after seeing him conduct the Chicago Symphony," he told Breaking Celebrity News of their first encounter, aged just four. "He said he'd never seen so much enthusiasm in his life."
When Shoky turned 15, he went to a summer concert by himself to see Levine, then aged 41, in action. When he learned the trains had shut down, and he was stranded, Shoky accepted a generous offer: a ride home from his idol.
Levine's motivations, it seems, were not rooted in generosity.
"He started holding my hands in the car in a very kind of sensual and uncomfortable way," explained Shoky.
"In my driveway, he started holding my hand in a prolonged and incredibly sensual way. I was not aroused, as I never was during my relationship with him as I am a heterosexual individual. But there were some feelings of affection and mostly confusion. He was saying things that I wanted to hear and was intrigued by. Things like, 'I want to see if you can be raised special like me. You can use me any way you want to. I can easily create a foundation to