Conductor Julian Wachner receives suspended sentence for possession of child sex abuse material

Julian Wachner conducting the Choir of Trinity Wall Street with the Trinity Baroque Orchestra in 2013. Hiroyuki Ito/Getty Images/Hulton Archive hide caption

The formerly prominent conductor Julian Wachner has been sentenced to nearly six years of probation after having pleaded guilty in July to five counts of possession of child sex abuse material and one count of possession of cocaine. Wachner must also register as a sex offender. He will receive credit for five days he spent in jail, according to the sentencing order.

The sentencing took place Wednesday afternoon in Indiana's Marion Superior Court.

At the time of his arrest in August 2025, Wachner, who had formerly been based in New York City, had been working as a fourth-grade math teacher at an Indianapolis charter school after his career as an internationally known conductor and composer had disintegrated in recent years. The school, Invent Learning Hub, told NPR at the time that it had not been aware that Wachner had been under police investigation, and that it had conducted thorough background checks. Wachner was fired after his arrest.

In charging documents issued in 2025, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said that Wachner had admitted to using cryptocurrency "hundreds of times" over several years to purchase videos of children "ranging in age from approximately 1 to 16 years old," and that Wachner disclosed to police that "his specific preference was for material involving children between the ages of 6 and 13."

Wachner was initially charged with 10 counts of possession of child sex abuse material depicting children younger than 12 years old and one count of possession of cocaine. On July 15, as part of a plea agreement with the state of Indiana, Wachner pleaded guilty to five of the child sexual abuse material charges and the cocaine possession charge, and waived his right to appeal the court's sentence.

Wachner had been once highly lauded as a musician who recorded over a dozen albums of his own and other composers' music, and had been twice-nominated for Grammy Awards as a conductor. He conducted major orchestras across the globe, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, and until 2022, he was the director of music and the arts at Trinity Church Wall Street, one of New York's wealthiest churches and a staple presence in the city's arts community. It is particularly well known for its youth chorus, which draws child singers from across the city.

He was dismissed from his job at Trinity in 2022, after The New York Times published a report that said that a woman had accused him of groping her and kissing her against her will at a Juilliard School residency program in Aiken, S.C., in 2014. Wachner denied the allegations, and no criminal charges were filed against him.