INDIANAPOLIS (IN)
New York Times [New York NY]
August 27, 2025
By Julia Jacobs
Police in Indiana accused Julian Wachner, the former music director at Trinity Church in New York, of possessing sex abuse imagery purchased with cryptocurrency.
Julian Wachner, a conductor and composer who was fired three years ago from Trinity Church in New York, was charged with possessing child sexual abuse material, prosecutors in Indianapolis said Tuesday.
Once a high-profile director of music and the arts at Trinity, one of the city’s wealthiest and most influential churches, Mr. Wachner was fired from the post in 2022 amid an investigation into a sexual misconduct allegation.
Mr. Wachner, who disputed the allegation, saw his music career unravel and had moved to Indianapolis, most recently working as a fourth-grade math teacher at a charter school. Last week, he was arrested after a tip to law enforcement that he had used cryptocurrency to purchase child sexual abuse material, according to court papers filed by the Marion County prosecutor’s office.
Two devices that the police recovered from his home contained dozens of files of child sexual abuse material, the court papers said.
A lawyer for Mr. Wachner, Bill Frederick, could not immediately be reached for comment.
Ryan Mears, the top prosecutor in Marion County, said that Mr. Wachner had pleaded not guilty at a hearing on Tuesday to charges including 10 counts of possession of child sex abuse material and one count of possession of cocaine. Mr. Wachner was released from jail on bond following his arrest last week.
In an affidavit detailing the investigation, a detective for the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department wrote that the case had been referred to law enforcement by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a nonprofit organization that operates a tip line.
The detective, Jason Zotz, wrote that law enforcement had been able to examine Mr. Wachner’s activity on the dark web through information provided by a cryptocurrency company that allowed them to track his purchases on a site that sells child sexual abuse material.
After law enforcement had secured a search warrant, police officers stopped Mr. Wachner, 55, in his car on Aug. 20 and detectives interviewed him at a police station. Detective Zotz wrote that during the conversation, Mr. Wachner admitted to having downloaded abuse material from the dark web over several years. He directed law enforcement officers to a laptop and hard drive at his home that contained the material, as well as a “substantial quantity” of cocaine, the detective wrote.
“This investigation is by no means over, and all of the materials have not been reviewed at this point,” Mr. Mears said in an interview.
Mr. Wachner was terminated from Trinity after a former Juilliard School employee publicly accused him of kissing and groping her at a school-sponsored festival where he performed in 2014.
He denied those allegations of misconduct and tried to rehabilitate his music career, associating himself with a nascent classical music organization that said it had hired him last year to conduct and record cantatas by Bach. The organization, known as the Concerto Vocale Foundation, said in a statement on Tuesday that it had terminated its relationship with Mr. Wachner following the charges.
The Indianapolis charter school where Mr. Wachner had recently taught released a statement on Tuesday saying that he had been dismissed. The school, Invent Learning Hub, said in its statement that neither its employees or board members had been aware that Mr. Wachner was under investigation and that it had no knowledge of “the actions that led to this situation.”
The Indianapolis Star reported that around the time of Mr. Wachner’s arrest last week, the school sent a statement to parents saying that his “inappropriate behavior” had occurred “outside the school day and off school premises.”
Julia Jacobs is an arts and culture reporter who often covers legal issues for The Times.