Dozens of former students of the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, where Jeffrey Epstein is said to have encountered some of his earliest victims, told a law firm hired by the school that they had been sexually abused by teachers, staff members, trustees and others affiliated with the institution in episodes ranging from the 1950s to the 2010s.
In a report released on Tuesday, after almost two years of interviews, the law firm presented firsthand accounts of Interlochen alumni, who said they had been subjected to misconduct ranging from grooming and flirting to intercourse. The report said that some 70 of the former students described physical abuse and identified the perpetrators as 47 adults affiliated with the center.
The report, which is 97 pages long, said that some of the adults figured in multiple accounts that stretched over decades, but that a majority of the episodes had occurred several decades ago and claims of abuse had dropped sharply since 2000.
“Many alums detailed the impact that this conduct had on them,” said the report, from the Sanghavi Law Office, a Massachusetts-based firm. “Some shared that the impacts were significant and lasted well after they graduated from, or otherwise left, Interlochen.”
The arts institution, which was founded in the 1920s, is both a year-round boarding school for teenage prodigies and a summer camp. It is known for its rigorous instruction and recreational diversions in a pastoral campus set near two lakes, and has long drawn a selective group of young musicians and other aspiring artists, including Mr. Epstein, who attended as a teenage bassoonist.
In recent years, Interlochen also became known as the place where Mr. Epstein, a celebrated donor to the school, returned to mingle with students, several of whom later said they had been subjected to his grooming and abuse.
Though parents of two girls who attended Interlochen have said that decades ago they told the school that their daughters were discomforted by Mr. Epstein’s attention, Interlochen officials have said the records they have on hand do not contain any indication of complaints about Mr. Epstein before his 2008 conviction in Florida of a sex offense involving a minor. The school has said it then cut all ties to him.
In a statement released alongside the report, Interlochen officials expressed their regrets.
“On behalf of Interlochen, we are deeply sorry for the harm experienced by members of our community and extend our apologies to those impacted by abuse at Interlochen,” Trey Devey, the school’s president, and Barrett Rollins, the chair of its board, said in a public letter to the Interlochen community.
“We have provided the names of all individuals accused of misconduct to the Grand Traverse County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office and the Grand Traverse County Sheriff’s Office, which will determine if there is a viable pathway to prosecution or other steps that could be taken to promote accountability or minimize current risk to students at other institutions,” the letter added.
Mr. Epstein was 14 when he attended the camp on a scholarship in 1967. Between 1990 and 2003, he returned as a donor, directing more than $400,000 to Interlochen, including $200,000 to build the Jeffrey E. Epstein Scholarship Lodge, created to house visitors and parents.
Records released by the Department of Justice and the school indicate that Mr. Epstein stayed in the lodge on some of his visits to Interlochen in the 1990s and in 2000. It was during those visits that Mr. Epstein is known to have met some of the earliest victims of his grooming and abuse.
The report included the accounts of two of the three former Interlochen students who have described disturbing encounters with Mr. Epstein. In one case, a woman told the investigators of going to meet him at the campus lodge where “Epstein engaged in sexual conduct with her, brushing against her body over her clothes, in a manner in which he indicated was accidental,” the report said.
The woman also told investigators that Mr. Epstein paid for her to visit him in New York on three occasions when she was a student.
“She described being in a room with Epstein in New York, and that his hands were on her,” the report said. It noted that “this alum said that on occasions when she and Epstein were crossing the road, he put his hand on her crotch.”
The report included additional claims by a third former Interlochen student who told investigators that Mr. Epstein had paid for her to fly to New York the summer after she graduated, and that she had given him a massage at his home and he “may have asked her to remove her top.” Her mother called Interlochen, her mother told investigators, to warn the school that Mr. Epstein was “preying on their students,” but they said no one from Interlochen had followed up.
In 2009, Interlochen renamed the Epstein lodge and removed a plaque that acknowledged his philanthropy. Mr. Epstein died in 2019. In June, Interlochen demolished the lodge as it continued to work to shed any connection to its former benefactor.
The episodes related in the investigators’ report occurred on and off campus, including in faculty houses.
While the report did not make any formal findings about Interlochen’s security protocols, it highlighted gaps that had, for example, allowed faculty and staff members to be alone with students while giving donors or trustees open access to the campus. None of the 47 adults referred to in the report are currently employed or affiliated with Interlochen, the school said.
The report noted instances in which the school took action at the time to fire employees when accusers came forward. It also listed new protocols Interlochen had put in place in recent years, such as enhanced reporting practices, improved background checks and 24/7 supervision of the campus. Some 240 cameras have been installed around its 1,200 acres.
In the wake of the report’s findings, Interlochen said it was making counseling support available for former students affected by the abuse. It also said it would remove naming credits on, for example, buildings if doing so was found to be warranted. The school said it had already changed the name of a building named after a former trustee who was associated with the school from 1970 to 1999.
“Interlochen today is fundamentally different from the institution described in this report,” the Interlochen officials wrote in the public letter.
The school said the investigators spoke with about 120 former students for the review.
Mr. Devey, who has been Interlochen’s president since 2017, credited a former student, who came forward in 2024 with a complaint from the 1970s, with spurring the broader investigation.
“It’s clearly been a difficult process for our community,” he said, “but I think an essential one.”