The prominent British music teacher has been sentenced to 11 years in prison.

Internationally recognised early music specialist and professor at London’s prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama, Philip Pickett, will go to jail for 11 years after being found guilty of a number of sexual assault charges dating back as far as the 1970s.

The 64-year-old musician carried out the attacks on two school girls and a young woman in sound-proof practice rooms, while teaching at the Guildhall. Describing Pickett’s actions as a “gross abuse of trust,” Judge Charles Wide sentenced Pickett to the lengthy jail-term after he was found guilty of two rapes and two indecent assaults, which took place between 1978 and 1983.

The Guildhall School of Music and Drama

The details of Pickett’s crimes showed that he took advantage of the music school’s sound-proofing, luring the vulnerable pupils into rooms where their screams could not be heard, before turning out the lights an assaulting them.

The first attack, which took place in 1978, involved a 16 year old recorder student of Pickett’s who was sexually assaulted after he asked the girl to remove her top under...