Seven decades. Forty-seven accused abusers. Seventy firsthand accounts of sexual misconduct against students — some of them children at summer camp. That's what a 97-page investigative report released Tuesday found at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in northern Michigan, one of the most prestigious arts boarding schools in the country.

Jeffrey Epstein is named as one of the 47 men who abused students at the school, but he wasn't even the worst one if you can believe it.

The investigation documented abuse spanning from the 1950s through the 2010s. The behaviors catalogued include grooming, sexual comments, unwanted touching, and outright intercourse — committed by faculty, administrators, and trustees against students in their care. Incidents happened on campus, in faculty homes, in cars, and at nearby lakes. The investigators' own summary of what they found was blunt: "The information gathered during this investigation is, simply, devastating."

Interlochen President Trey Devey called the findings "absolutely heartbreaking" and said, "It's contrary to everything this institution stands for, and we're deeply sorry for the harm experienced by members of our community." The names of all 47 accused individuals have been forwarded to the Grand Traverse County Prosecutor's Office and Sheriff's Office. Roughly one-third of those accused are already dead. Only four agreed to be interviewed.

The report names names. Byron Hanson, a faculty member and administrator who worked at Interlochen from 1960 to 2015, had seven corroborated reports of misconduct concentrated in the 1960s and 1970s. John "Jack" Hood, faculty from 1963 to 1979 with seasonal roles continuing until 2004, had four reports. Charlie McWhorter, a trustee from 1970 to 1999, had multiple corroborating accounts from different victims. Thomas Clower, an arts faculty member from 2003 to 2005, was criminally convicted of sexual conduct with a student in 2005.

Then there's Epstein. He was a donor to Interlochen from 1990 to 2003 and had attended the school as a teenager. Two former students reported physical sexual conduct with him. Ghislaine Maxwell appears in both accounts. Interlochen conducted internal investigations into Epstein in 2009 and again in 2019 — after his first conviction and then after his arrest on federal charges. In June 2026, the school demolished Green Lake Lodge, formerly known as the Epstein Lodge. Took them long enough to knock down the building. Took even longer to tell anyone what happened inside it.

Devey says the institution is committed to transparency now. "Our students are watching what we do," he told reporters. "We can do the right thing. We can apologize for the harm that happened here and we can do the right thing by sharing our commitment to get even better as an organization." Which sounds nice. But the investigation was only initiated in the summer of 2023 after an alumna from the 1960s came forward — meaning someone had to push them into it sixty years after the fact. The school didn't decide to look. It got caught not looking.

This is the pattern we've seen at every elite institution that gets exposed. Penn State. USA Gymnastics. The Catholic Church. The Southern Baptist Convention. The adults in charge knew — or chose not to know, which amounts to the same thing — and the kids absorbed the cost. The prestige of the institution became more important than the safety of the children it existed to serve.

The majority of the documented abuse occurred before 2000. The report notes that after 2000, the school began taking responsive action under mandated reporting obligations. In other words, they started doing what the law required — not out of conscience, but because the legal landscape changed around them.