Survivor describes impact of sexual assault by Lancaster piano teacher

LANCASTER (OH)
Lancaster Eagle-Gazette

June 27, 2018

By Spencer Remoquillo

In more than 6,000 words, a teen victim — now a young woman — explained how being sexually assaulted by her 56-year-old piano teacher at a local church impacted her life.

The victim, who was 16 when the abuse started, read a detailed statement to Fairfield County Common Pleas Judge David Trimmer who sentenced her abuser, 56-year-old Carlyle Sparrow, to complete five years of community control and to register as a Tier III sex offender.

“I didn’t want to be at school,” she said in court Monday. “I didn’t want to be at home. I didn’t want to be anywhere. I wanted to be dead. I wanted my living nightmare to stop. I Googled which type of pills I could take to kill myself and how many it would take. Every time I drove my car, I looked for the places on my road that would be ideal to crash my car: over a cliff, down a hill, in a ditch. I thought about my future and decided it wasn’t worth living. I would never be the girl I used to be.”

The Eagle-Gazette preserves the identity of crime victims, particularly those who suffer sexual abuse.

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