Several school districts in Southern California warned parents this weekend that flutes and recorders given to children through a nonprofit music program may have been contaminated with bodily fluids. At least one district specified that those fluids could have been semen.
Local, state and federal agencies were investigating a male music teacher who visited schools in Southern California through a program called Flutes Across the World, according to updates from the Saugus Union School District, which serves the Santa Clarita area.
The performer distributes a flutelike musical instrument made of PVC pipe or bamboo to students during a music lesson, and the allegation is that he contaminated some of these instruments with semen, Saugus Union Superintendent Joan Lucid said in an email to parents on Saturday. These allegations are deeply concerning, and I realize they raise many questions.
The California Department of Justice and the U.S. Postal Service were among the agencies investigating the program, the district said. Lucid said children were never alone with the music specialist, who was not a district employee.
The Saugus district urged students who had an instrument from the Flutes Across the World program to place it inside a paper bag and contact the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriffs Office.
