Brave: Mrs Andrade faced her abusers in the court by choice in a 'cathartic' experience, the judge in the case said
From the moment Michael Brewer set eyes on 13-year-old Frances Andrade, the grooming process began.
The director of music first asked the prospective pupil to improvise Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree on the piano.
A barrage of flattery then followed: ‘Of all the thousands of auditions I have sat through, that was one of the two best I’ve ever heard.’
With that, the teenager won herself a place at Chetham’s School of Music, unaware her talent had delivered her into the hands of a man with a perverted predilection for his young, female pupils.
Soon after starting at the £30,000-a-year boarding school, the abuse began, first with groping, then other sex acts. The scene would switch from Brewer’s office to music rooms and to his camper van.
Ultimately, she would even be abused at the home he shared with wife Kay, and their four daughters.
On that dreadful occasion, it was Mrs Brewer who was the abuser.
Aware of her husband’s twisted ‘relationship’ with Frances, she told the teenager ‘You owe me’ before indecently assaulting her.
The details of the abuse, which culminated in a trial that concluded yesterday with the conviction of the couple, both 68, on charges of indecent assault, are shocking enough.
But what makes this story uniquely terrible is the fact that Mrs Andrade did not live to see the people who ruined her life brought to justice.
Just over two weeks ago, on January 24, she committed suicide. Hours earlier, Mr Brewer had given evidence in court. ‘She was vivacious, dynamic, commanding on stage but underneath was insecure, depressive, hysterical and a fantasist,’ were the words he used to describe his accuser.
The idea that he had ever abused the then-teenager in the way she herself had accused him of doing when standing in that same witness box just days earlier was, he said, ‘repulsive’.
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