James Levine, the famous conductor and honorary music director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York, is the latest front-runner to be involved in a harassment and sexual assault scandal after he was accused of sexually abusing a 1980s sexually assaulted man.
The alleged victim, who remains anonymous, told Illinois State Police in the northeastern United States that the incidents began in 1985, when he was 15, and the conductor, 41, and continued until 1993, according to the New York Post. .
"It made me feel guilty," the man, now 48, told police, according to the newspaper. "I was hurt emotionally, I felt lost, paralyzed."
The man allegedly told police in Lake Forrest, Illinois that James Levine used to masturbate in front of him and kiss his sex, according to the newspaper.
After years of sending gifts to the young man, in 1985 James Levine began, according to the complaint, sexual assaults. At first caressing the young man's hand "extended and incredibly sensual", something that made the teenager feel "very uncomfortable". The man then accuses James Levine of stroking his sex in a luxury hotel room in Lake Forrest, where the scene is said to have been repeated "hundreds of times" over the years.