Cellist Jérôme Pernoo, internationally renowned soloist and teacher, was sentenced this Tuesday, September 26, in Paris to a one-year suspended prison sentence for sexual assault on a former student aged 14 at the time of the events, in 2005 .
In May, the prosecution requested two years in prison, one of which was suspended, against the 51-year-old musician, a former professor at the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris (CNSMDP). The sentence handed down by the Paris criminal court is accompanied by a ban on carrying out, for ten years, any voluntary or professional activity with minors. The name of the convicted person was entered in the File of perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses (Fijais).
Jérôme Pernoo was found guilty of sexual assault on a former student who was 14 years old at the time of the events, in 2005, in London. The latter had claimed that the teacher had “stroked his penis by surprise while he was asleep in his bed”. The student, now 32 years old, had followed courses led by the man he considered his “surrogate father”, having lost his father at a very young age.
The defendant was ordered to pay him 6,070 euros for material damage and 5,000 euros for moral damage. The cellist, however, was acquitted of sexual harassment of two young adults between 2011 and 2016, due to persistent doubt and the absence of direct witnesses. The two complainants accused him of “slaps on the buttocks”, caresses on the breasts as part of a game called “pouet-pouet” (palpation), or the attribution of the nickname “my little pussy”.
The affair, which had shaken the Paris Conservatory, was recounted in an investigation by L’Express, published in May.
“Troubled relationships”
At the end of 2022, a young cellist renowned until now who intervened in support of his mentor also chose to speak out against the professor, affirming that the defendant had, among other things, “tried to kiss him” and had sent him “numerous messages of love. Jérôme Pernoo was acquitted for these facts which he always denied. The court nevertheless underlined the “troubled relationships”, as well as the “ambiguous attitude causing confusion” that the cello teacher had with his students, but which “do not have a criminal character”.
Asked by AFP, Jérôme Pernoo’s counsel, Me Chirine Heydari-Malayeri, indicated that she would examine with her client “the motivation adopted in the judgment” before a decision on a possible appeal. The musician “was acquitted for almost all of the facts for which he appeared. He was found innocent of all the accusations brought by former students of his class at the Paris Conservatory” and “contests the existence” “the only attack upheld by the court”, highlighted the lawyer.
A teacher at the CNSMDP since 2007, Jérôme Pernoo was suspended then dismissed without notice or compensation by the Parisian establishment in May 2022, following an administrative investigation and a disciplinary procedure. The dismissal was confirmed in November by the Paris administrative court. The teacher appealed this sanction.