Conductor Julian Wachner Sentenced to Probation for Child Sexual Abuse Material Possession
Julian Wachner, the ex-music and arts director at Trinity Church Wall Street, was handed nearly six years of probation by Indiana's Marion Superior Court on Wednesday. This comes after he pleaded guilty on July 15 to five charges related to possessing child sex abuse material and one charge for cocaine possession. As part of his sentence, he must register as a sex offender and has received credit for five days served. When he was arrested in August 2025, he was teaching fourth-grade math at Invent Learning Hub, which had no knowledge of the investigation. Wachner admitted to purchasing videos of children aged 1 to 16 with cryptocurrency. He was dismissed from Trinity in 2022 due to groping allegations, and his defamation case against Juilliard was thrown out in June 2023.
Key facts
- Julian Wachner was sentenced to nearly six years of probation in Indiana's Marion Superior Court on Wednesday.
- He pleaded guilty on July 15 to five counts of possession of child sex abuse material and one count of possession of cocaine.
- Wachner must register as a sex offender and received credit for five days served in jail.
- At the time of his August 2025 arrest, he was a fourth-grade math teacher at Invent Learning Hub, an Indianapolis charter school.
- Charging documents stated Wachner admitted using cryptocurrency hundreds of times to buy videos of children aged approximately 1 to 16.
- He was initially charged with 10 counts of possession of child sex abuse material depicting children younger than 12 and one count of cocaine possession.
- Wachner was dismissed from Trinity Church Wall Street in 2022 after a New York Times report of a 2014 sexual misconduct allegation at a Juilliard residency in Aiken, South Carolina.
- His defamation lawsuit against Juilliard was dismissed with prejudice by the New York Supreme Court in June 2023.
Entities
Artists
- Julian Wachner
- Anastasia Tsioulcas
Institutions
- Trinity Church Wall Street
- Trinity Baroque Orchestra
- Choir of Trinity Wall Street
- Invent Learning Hub
- Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department
- Marion Superior Court
- Philadelphia Orchestra
- Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
- The Juilliard School
- New York Supreme Court
- NPR
- The New York Times
- Getty Images
- Hulton Archive
- Trinity Wall Street
- Juilliard
Locations
- New York City
- New York
- United States
- Indianapolis
- Indiana
- Aiken
- South Carolina