An internationally-acclaimed conductor has been jailed for eight months for indecently assaulting a teenage girl.

Nicholas Smith, who lived in Bollington until recently moving to France, co-founded the town’s annual Christmas extravaganza Winterfest and was among a group of influential Maxonians to represent the town on a trip to China.

His victim - a pupil at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester - reported the attack to police after remaining silent for 36 years.

The single indecent assault by 66-year-old Smith, when his victim was aged 15 and he was 30, took “minutes” but ruined her life, the court heard.

Smith, a visiting conductor at Chetham’s in the 1970s, at first denied the sex attack but later admitted one count of indecent assault against his vulnerable victim, now in her 50s, on a date between 1976 and 1978, at his country cottage in Derbyshire.

Smith went on to become an internationally-renowned conductor working across the world but his reputation now lies in ruins, the court heard. Jailing him for eight months, Judge Peter Lakin told Smith, now living in Malestroit in Brittany, France: “You breached the trust placed in you in a most serious way. She was highly vulnerable and you knew it.

“When you were alone with her, you cynically took advantage of her vulnerability and subjected her to a deeply unpleasant and frightening ordeal. This was a forceful sexual assault by someone in authority.”

Smith’s victim contacted police following the high-profile death of sex attack victim Frances Andrade, a fellow pupil, at the music school,
Minshull Street Crown Court heard.

Smith was investigated in the aftermath of Mrs Andrade’s death during last year’s sex abuse trial of Michael Brewer, the former music director at Chetham’s.

Mrs Andrade killed herself at her home in Guildford, Surrey, a week after giving evidence against Brewer.

Brewer was jailed for six years for indecently assaulting ex-pupil Mrs Andrade, 48, when she was 14 and 15 in the 1970s.

Smith’s victim told police the death of Mrs Andrade, whom she knew while at the school, was like the “curtain of a stage lifted”.

Smith was the artistic director of the 2009 Bollington Festival and founded the Silk Opera Company. He was invited to help direct the Barnaby Festival between 2009 - 2012.

Smith also travelled to China in 2012 with a group of fellow Maxonians to help strengthen the town’s inclusion on the ‘Silk Road’, which represents the historical journey of silk from its origins in China to its production in Macclesfield.