Baritone Samuel Schultz, who was sexually assaulted by famed countertenor David Daniels in 2010. Daniels pleaded responsible on Friday in a Houston courtroom.
Jamie Schultz/Courtesy of the artist
cover caption
toggle caption
Jamie Schultz/Courtesy of the artist
Baritone Samuel Schultz, who was sexually assaulted by famed countertenor David Daniels in 2010. Daniels pleaded responsible on Friday in a Houston courtroom.
Jamie Schultz/Courtesy of the artist
Editor’s be aware: This report contains accounts of sexual abuse.
When Samuel Schultz walked right into a courthouse in Houston, Texas, final Friday morning, he anticipated that he can be testifying in opposition to David Daniels — a person as soon as revered by the opera world as one in every of its most interesting singers — and Daniels’ husband, Scott Walters.
5 years in the past this month, Schultz had come ahead to accuse Daniels and Walters of drugging and raping him in 2010, when he was a graduate pupil at Rice College. After assembly via a mutual buddy at a celebration following one in every of Daniels’ performances at Houston Grand Opera, the couple invited Schultz, who can also be an opera singer, again to the residence the place they have been staying.
Schultz, a baritone singer who’s now 36, had been trying ahead to networking with Daniels, a famous countertenor who then usually carried out on lots of the world’s prime phases. On the residence, Schultz unknowingly took a spiked drink from the couple, blacked out, and was sexually assaulted.
Within the years since Schultz made his accusations public, Daniels, 57, and Walters, 40, who had been married by the then-Supreme Court docket Justice Ruth Ginsburg in 2014, had constantly proclaimed their innocence. In a shocking last-minute flip, nonetheless, with a jury already seated and with the trial nearly to start out, Daniels and Walters as an alternative admitted their guilt. Each males pleaded responsible to having sexually assaulted an grownup, which is a second-degree felony.
By making a plea deal, the 2 males averted the extra critical cost of aggravated sexual assault and potential jail time. As an alternative, they every face eight years of probation, lifetime necessities to register as intercourse offenders, and an order to chorus from contact with Schultz. (The case is being transferred from Texas, the place the assault occurred, to Georgia, the place Daniels and Walters reside.) Daniels’ and Walters’ legal professional, Matt Hennessy, didn’t reply to NPR’s request for remark.
In an interview with NPR Monday, Schultz maintains that the protection had tried to exhaust him into giving up since he first got here ahead. “It has been 13 years since I first skilled this trauma,” he says, “and the final 5 years have been far more troublesome than I might have imagined. A big a part of that’s the delay ways the protection used to attempt to exhaust me, to attempt to make me surrender. And we see individuals who cannot beat the reality use delay ways to additional malign the individuals they’ve abused.”
Schultz was maybe probably the most public accuser in opposition to Daniels, however not the one one. In 2020, the singer was fired by the College of Michigan from his tenured place following a number of allegations of sexual misconduct. A lawsuit between former UM pupil Andrew Lipian and the college, wherein Lipian accused Daniels of sexually harassing and assaulting him, was settled in Could.
The pandemic accounted for a few of the trial delays in Houston, however Schultz maintains that the five-year hole between his accusations and the day the 2 males pleaded in court docket created additional trauma. “I have been accused of mendacity,” Schultz observes, noting that a number of highly effective former colleagues of Daniels publicly defended the countertenor. “Once I first got here ahead, I used to be accused of profiting from the MeToo motion. After all I took benefit of the MeToo motion! That is why the MeToo motion exists — for survivors to lastly declare energy that they have been denied.”
“The fact is these defendants admitted their guilt in court docket on Friday after spending the final 5 years mendacity about their innocence,” Schultz continues. “In a way, I have been the one on public trial. I have been the one anticipated to deal with the burden of publicly calling out harmful individuals. I by no means imagined they’d admit their guilt. And I used to be shocked when on the 59th minute of the eleventh hour, once they have been confronted with the overwhelming proof the state was about to current, together with my testimony, they accepted a plea settlement.”
Schultz says that listening to Daniels and Walters plead responsible created “emotional whiplash” for him. “David Daniels was the primary to plead,” he remembers. “After he pleaded responsible, the decide mentioned one thing to the impact of ‘You are pleading responsible since you are responsible?’ ‘Sure.’ ‘There is no different purpose you are pleading responsible?’ ‘No.’ Listening to that full and full request for forgiveness, with no qualification, with no asterisk, was overwhelmingly highly effective.”
Transferring ahead, Schultz says, he plans to make use of his expertise to proceed to be an advocate. After making his accusations in opposition to Daniels and Walters, he briefly served as an official within the American Guild of Musical Artists (AGMA), the union that represents opera performers, however resigned after he accused the union of attempting to create a “sweetheart deal” with star singer Placido Domingo, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by 20 ladies. The union had carried out an investigation into Domingo, who walked away from a deliberate $500,000 settlement with AGMA.
“Now we have programs inside establishments which might be based mostly on centuries of custom,” Schultz says emphatically. “Consequently, we settle for sure norms — the sweeping beneath the rug of the highly effective’s typically egregious conduct. I might hope that inside conservatories, younger artist applications, universities, and public establishments, we begin to study processes we have accepted as regular. Let’s get again to the fundamentals of how we acknowledge human dignity regardless of standing, regardless of fame, and regardless of cash. I do know that is going to take a very long time, however I hope this can be a huge nudge to have interaction in that work.”
Schultz says that regardless of the ache of the previous a number of years, he is tried to maintain different victims entrance of thoughts “as a chance to talk for individuals who have not felt that they’ve a voice, to make use of the expertise I’ve endured to assist result in an understanding and empathy — and possibly even some systemic adjustments, so this highway is slightly bit simpler for individuals who come behind me.”