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Philadelphia Inquirer
Former School of Rock students
say they were harmed. But Paul
Green kept teaching — until
long-buried allegations came to
light
Story by Mike Newall and Emily Bloch, The Philadelphia
Inquirer
•
1d
Kaleen Reading, a drummer with the band Mannequin
Pussy, performing at the World Cafe Live in 2024.
© Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
PHILADELPHIA — They talk now.Dozens of former students of the Paul Green
School of Rock Music, most long out of touch,
have reconnected to talk about their past. They
had rock and roll childhoods most kids could
only dream about. The epic road trips and
European tours. The performances with rock
stars like Eddie Vedder and Billy Idol.
Former School of Rock students Allie Hauptman and Aaron
Sheehan at Rowhouse Grocery in Philadelphia on June 30,
2025.
© Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
But the alumni of the lauded former
Philadelphia musical education program are not
simply reminiscing about the music. They are
coming to terms with the physical,
psychological, and emotional abuse they say
Paul Green subjected them to while they were
children.Their conversations revolve around a report Air
Mail magazine published in May about Green, a
former punk rocker who styled himself a brash
tastemaker, and the school he founded in 1998.
Based on interviews with more than 60 former
students, the story described how Green often
flew into violent rages, struck students, and
fostered a sexually charged environment for his
teenage students.
Former School of Rock students Emilia Richman, left, and
Carolyn Satlow at Dickinson Square Park on July 7, 2025, in
Philadelphia.
© Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
Although Green did not respond to the
allegations in the Air Mail story at the time, he
announced through a spokesperson soon after
that he would not join his students on a
summer tour in the U.S. and Europe.Since, two dozen of Green’s former students
and staff members have spoken with The
Philadelphia Inquirer to share additional
allegations of misconduct. They include a
woman who said Green initiated frequent
sexual contact that lasted nearly two years with
her in 2007, when she was his 17-year-old
student.
It is the first time Green, who was the vulgar
and volatile subject of a 2005 documentary
"Rock School," has been publicly accused of
having sex with a student enrolled at his school.
Green declined to be interviewed for this story.
After the Inquirer emailed Green this week with
a list of allegations it would be reporting, Green
responded Thursday and denied having sexual
relations with anyone underage or who hadbeen a student at the time. He added that he
will close his current children’s music
academies, including one in Roxborough, and
will retire from teaching.
Green said in a statement Thursday, “I want to
be very clear, however, that some of the more
serious allegations being made, particularly
those that are sexual in nature, are not accurate.
I have never shown students pornography, and
while I admit to extramarital relationships with
women connected to School of Rock, I have
never had a romantic or sexual relationship with
anyone under legal age or anyone who was a
current student, during that time frame, or ever.
I also deny any sexual harassment.”
The age of consent in Pennsylvania is 16, but
sexual contact by a person in a recognized
position of trust or authority — such as a
teacher or school administrator — with
someone under 18 is considered a third-degree
felony punishable by up to seven years in
prison. This was the law in 2007, and it remains
the same today.Paul Green, founder of the School of Rock, in his work space
in his home in Philadelphia on April 16, 2021.
© Jessica Griffin/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS
The woman, who the Inquirer agreed not to
name because of the nature of the claims, said
Green first began flirting with her when she was
15, with “inappropriate jokes or comments
about my appearance.”
As she got older, it escalated.
“Then, winking, touching, hugging,” the woman
said. “He would put his hand on my leg and see
how high he could go before I stopped him.”
She was a member of the School of Rock’s All
Stars, the most talented musicians who toured
as a band and performed at professional venues
and festivals. She said that during her junior
year in high school, when she was 17, Green
invited her to meet him for sex at a hotel near
the former Race Street school, asking if she was
going to “chicken out” before texting her his
room number.The ongoing sexual contact that began that day
lasted for almost two years, only ending after
the woman graduated and moved away, she
said.
During their time together, the woman said,
Green sometimes provided her with marijuana,
Champagne, or cocaine. He rented porn for
them to watch and attempted to arrange a
threesome with a former student working at the
school, she said.
He would joke, “You’re my teenage mistress,”
she said.
Two of Green’s former students and two former
staffers told the Inquirer they had known that
Green was engaged in sexual conduct with the
woman while she was his student and after
graduation. Two of them said Green himself had
told them at the time about the sexual contact
— both of whom asked not to be named for
fear that it could affect their current
employment. One former staffer said Green and
the student had been intimate on a European
tour bus, under a blanket, while chaperones sat
rows ahead.
That staffer said they were afraid at the time to
speak out against Green, who ruled the school
he created like a self-proclaimed “Überlord.”
But staying silent is a regret they’ve carried for
nearly two decades.“I didn’t protect her at all,” the former staffer
lamented.
Many of the 60-plus students who described
Green’s physical, verbal, and inappropriate
behavior to Air Mail, a weekly news and culture
newsletter launched in 2019 by alums of The
New York Times and Vanity Fair, are now
connected in a WhatsApp group. After an
Inquirer reporter contacted the former students,
they responded with an open letter to explain
why they had decided to continue speaking out.
“We entered his programs with trust and hope,
but too many of us left with wounds and
trauma we’re still working to heal. Some of us
have never played music again.”
And despite bonds of life-forming musical
experiences, many of them told the Inquirer
they went their separate ways after the School
of Rock, hoping to forget the pain.
“It was total manipulation,” said Carolyn Satlow,
37, an All Star who attended the Downingtown
branch of the School of Rock from 2004 to
2006, and is now chief of staff of the Vetri
restaurant group. “This web of secrets that kept
us all silent.”
Satlow had turned 18 and graduated from the
School of Rock when Green began a
monthslong sexual relationship with her in
2007. At the time, she was working at theschool as an administrator.
Now married with two children, Satlow said
Green also told her about his sexual contact
with the then-teenage student.
“I thought this adult person was the authority in
the room,” she said of Green. “We all trusted
him. I was an insecure teenager and Paul knew
that and preyed on it.”
Satlow says being able to talk about what
happened, and reconnect with other students
who went through similar experiences, has been
healing.
“We found lives for ourselves, and we’ve
become successful in music and outside of
music, and just being great human beings,”
Satlow said. “Because we’re all just actively
trying not to be him.”
By constantly discussing his own sex life and the
sex lives of students, who were mostly 12 to 18
years old, Green created an environment where
even his most outrageous behavior could be
normalized, former students and staffers said.
Jen Bowles, an administrator at the school from
2005 to 2007, told the Inquirer that Green had
sent her texts asking if she would have sex with
him if he booked a fancy hotel, like the
Rittenhouse Hotel or the Sofitel Philadelphia at
Rittenhouse Square.Serious about her job at the school, which she
initially saw as an empowering, punk rock space
for young musicians to express themselves,
Bowles, who was then 24, said she had tried to
ignore Green’s messages as inappropriate jokes.
Bowles, who now lives in Vancouver after
earning a doctorate in public health from Drexel
University, recalls attending a post-show work
dinner Green arranged in 2007 at the former
Abbaye bar and restaurant in Northern
Liberties. Bowles had hoped the dinner would
be an opportunity to discuss a potential
promotion to manage the Philly school.
After they had just ordered dinner, she said,
Green asked her to have sex with him.
“‘It’s finally happening,’” she recalls Green
saying, adding that he assumed that they would
have sex.
When she rejected his proposition, she said,
Green berated her over dinner, referring to her
as a “tease,” shouting that he would find a way
to fire her. During his tirade, Bowles said, Green
told her that her rejection didn’t matter. He had
other options for sex, including students, staff,
and sex workers, she recalls him saying.
Bowles said Green then bragged about his
sexual conduct with former students and staff
he had taught since childhood.“I wait till they’re 18,” Bowles recalls him saying.
Bowles said she did not report back to work the
following Monday and resigned within a week.
“I was broken at this point,” Bowles said. “I
thought my future was crumbling into a million
pieces, and I learned that the young people I
cared about were in the hands of a horrible
person.”
Bowles’ longtime friend, Ruth Scullion, recalls
Bowles telling her about the experience with
Green shortly after it happened in 2007.
“She had told me about the culture at the
school — and that she felt preyed on,” Scullion.
“She told me about going out to dinner with
Paul for what she thought was a work dinner,
and how he started being overtly sexual with
her and propositioning her. She said when she
refused, he said, ‘Well, you’re too old for me
anyway.’ It still gives me chills thinking about it,
Julia Rainer, 37, a former All Star guitarist who
now lives in South Philly and works as a
therapist, also recalled Bowles detailing the
incident to her at the time.
School of Rock emails shared with the Inquirer
show that two months later, Green strategized
with a staffer on how best to attack Bowles’
credibility if she filed a sexual harassment
lawsuit. By then, the circumstances surroundingthe popular employee’s departure had started
to spread among staff, even as Bowles decided
against pursuing legal action.
Green wrote to the staffer in 2007 about the
alleged advances, saying of himself, “Once
again: Paul being Paul.” Then later adding,
“Here is EXACTLY what I need from you: keep
your ears way to the ground, do what damage
control you can do.”
For many former students, the nearly two years
since the Air Mail reporter’s initial contacts have
included painful revelations to family members,
therapists, and each other.
Last year, people who had long avoided
reckoning with their past at School of Rock
began to reconnect on Zoom.
A.Z. Madonna, 32, a former All Star, who
originally grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey,
and now writes about classical music for The
Boston Globe, said for years she had distanced
herself from her rock school friends.
“I didn’t want to be reminded of how Paul made
me feel, which was that I was a failure who
deserved to fail,” she said to the Inquirer.
But Madonna is now part of the private
WhatsApp group chat, where for months the 60
former students shared stories about their
experience at School of Rock. Some still talkdaily, offering messages of support to friends
picking up their instruments again.
There have been park meetups and coffee shop
get-togethers. In May, a bunch of the former
students attended a Metallica and Limp Bizkit
concert, the latter a band they say Green would
have berated them for listening to as kids,
always emphasizing the classics.
“It’s been very healing,” said Emilia Richman, 33,
a South Philly musician and former All Star who
now works as a mental health administrator. “So
many of us had stayed away from each other
because of our shame.”
While some former students said that the rock
school unlocked opportunities, they also said
that Green taught them through fear and
humiliation.
Allie Hauptman, 38, who attended the Philly
school from 1998 to 2005, and is a founding
partner of Rowhouse Grocery, a boutique
corner store in South Philly, said she would
often turn down the volume on her keyboard all
the way so that Green wouldn’t be able to hear
any possible mistakes so she was “in the clear
from the yelling and swearing.”
Rainer recently played her first show after
returning to music in the months after the Air
Mail story published.“The culture of humiliating you, bullying you,
isolating you — that was always part of rock
school,” she said.
So was Green’s controlling behavior, the
students said.
“He really became addicted to that power and
control he had over all of us,” said Gina
Randazzo, 40, of Collingswood, who began
guitar lessons with Green in 1999, was an All
Star, and eventually worked at Studio House, a
now-closed recording studio for students and
young people in suburban New York that Green
opened in 2010. “It was almost like he couldn’t
help himself.”
The former students say they are not after
revenge.
“This is about ensuring that no child is ever
again put in a position where they are
vulnerable to this kind of manipulation, control,
and abuse,” they said in their letter. “While he
has released a statement closing PGRA and
retiring from teaching ‘in this capacity,’ our
primary concern is that PG is never again placed
in a position of power over children.”
In their open letter against Green, the 60 former
students spoke directly to his most-recent
students.
“We hope you are safe,” they said.That’s something Aaron Sheehan, 33, an All Star
from 2007 to 2009 and member of Studio
House, tried to tell the students himself when
he chanced upon Green’s new pupils jamming
to Yes at a South Philly street festival three years
ago.
Walking toward the music, he decided to
confront Green for telling him he was no good
until he finally believed it.
But Green hadn’t come. Sheehan tried telling
the parents, but they brushed him away. He
must’ve had a bad experience, they told him.
They love Paul.
It was hard watching the rock school kids play.
“It was like looking at us all over again,” he said.
In 2009, Green sold most of the company he
had formed out of his living room to an
investment fund in a deal worth $10 million. In
2023, the School of Rock, which now includes
500 schools worldwide, was purchased by Youth
Enrichment Brands, a leading youth activities
platform.
Stacey Ryan, the current School of Rock
president, stressed that the institution has had
no affiliation with Green for more than 15 years.
“Student safety is our highest priority, and our
mission has always been to provide an
empowering space where young people cangrow — not just as musicians, but as
individuals,” she said.
As part of the 2009 deal, Green retained
leadership of the All Stars program, but left
within a year after a final meltdown with
students, when Green allegedly mocked a
student’s Catholic faith, threw a metal chair, and
referred to Mother Teresa with a vulgar term for
a woman’s vagina, said Sam Mercurio, a South
Philly musician and former All Star from 2007 to
2010.
“By the end, he had made it all feel so normal,”
said Mercurio, who told the Inquirer Green once
whipped him with a mic cable during a
rehearsal.
After living in Woodstock, New York, for a time,
Green returned to Philadelphia in 2017, opening
up a new venture, the Roxborough-based Paul
Green Rock Academy. The academy, which also
has locations in Connecticut and the Bay Area,
offered students the same chances to tour and
jam with musicians, like the former Zappa band
members, that the original rock school kids did
20 years ago.
Shortly after the Air Mail article, the academy’s
social media went dormant. Scott Thunes, the
academy’s longtime assistant musical director
and former Frank Zappa bassist, would be in
charge of tours and the entire program,
according to a spokesperson at the time. Greensaid that the school would be renamed the
Thunes Institute for Musical Excellence.
In late June, the North Philly performance space
PhilaMOCA canceled the students’ scheduled
performance of “We Love Zappa.” A
spokesperson for the venue said that Green’s
continued involvement with the school, along
with a push from a former student, led them to
shut the show down. Thunes said the
cancellation only hurt the students.
Despite his statement, when reached by the
Inquirer on Monday, Green was with the Thunes
Institute students on an August European tour,
alongside Gibby Haynes, the lead singer of the
Butthole Surfers and a longtime collaborator
with Green’s rock schools. Videos show him in
the front row.
In a statement to the Inquirer, Green said he
was stepping in for Thunes, who had to leave
citing a “personal issue” halfway through the
tour. “The students worked so hard and had
already experienced so much turbulence
heading into the tour, so we weighed the
backlash of me attending versus the fallout of
canceling,” Green said. “The current parents
unanimously requested that I return to ensure a
smooth transition until we could implement a
suitable replacement.”
Green, who graduated from Temple University
Beasley School of Law in 2021, said he did notspeak out sooner about the Air Mail allegations
because, “I have been reflecting on that time
period, gathering my thoughts, and trying to
find the right words. I have been balancing how
to genuinely apologize and take accountability
for my actions from over 15 years ago, while
also unambiguously denying the allegations of
things that never occurred.”
Long open about his battle with addiction, he
had his own dysfunctional childhood — he
grew up fatherless in Port Richmond, joined the
Philly punk scene by 13, lived on his own by 15,
and formed the rock school when his music
career failed. Green said drug rehab and years
of therapy and meditation have helped him
grow.
“I started School of Rock in my living room
because I love teaching music, and I wanted to
create a fun and intensive atmosphere for
students,” he said in his statement to the
Inquirer. “I had no idea that it would be
successful, and I was not at all prepared for that
success at such a young age. I was an
overgrown teenager when those students
needed a responsible adult. That said, despite
how it may appear, my inappropriate behavior
or language never came from a place of
predatory intent as has been insinuated.”
He added that closing the schools “was not an
easy decision, as teaching music has been mylife’s work and greatest passion. But I believe
this is the right moment to close this chapter
with gratitude and integrity.”
Ten parents, who contacted the Inquirer
through a spokesperson for the Paul Green
Rock Academy, said they never witnessed Green
cross a line. None of the children ever told them
he did, they said.
“I have seen countless rehearsals and
performances in the last seven years,” said one
parent, whose child is a longtime student at the
academy. “I’ve never witnessed any of those
alleged behaviors, nor has my child ever
reported inappropriate conduct.”
When speaking to the Inquirer, the parents,
whose children are current or former students
of the Paul Green Rock Academy, were only
responding to the questions about the
allegations already published by Air Mail. The
Inquirer did not make them aware of the new
sexual allegations detailed in this story.
Although Green, in his statement, says he’s
changed, parents of current students at the
Rock Academy tell the Inquirer that Green
didn’t run from his bad boy image.
While assuring them he’s mellowed, he still
makes it part of his selling point — and a new
generation of parents believe him.“Paul’s teaching style was addressed right from
the very beginning,” said one parent, whose
daughter graduated from the academy, in a
statement provided to the Inquirer through a
school spokesperson after a reporter had
contacted the academy about Green. “In my
mind there was no question that we all knew
what we were signing up for.”
One parent said Green recommended that
families considering the Paul Green Rock
Academy watch "Rock School ," which shows
him berating and humiliating students busy
mastering some of the most complicated rock
compositions ever written. In the film, Green
also presents a student who described being
suicidal with an award for “most likely to kill
himself.”
Green can still be “arrogant,” “rude,” and
“foulmouthed,” the parents said. He sometimes
still screams and storms out of rehearsals, they
said. One parent said she had met with Green
for throwing a rattle shaker at her child, but that
they had moved past it.
The parent, who stressed she did not want to
dismiss the former students’ experiences,
credits Green’s “grittier” and “edgier” approach
for helping her son, who is neurodiverse,
flourish socially and musically.
His current students appear heavily devoted. On
Instagram, they praise classic rock and quoteZappa. They take each other to prom and form
bands. They post tour updates and photos from
past performances, where Green could often be
seen in the front row.
Green addressed the allegations months ago,
they said, removed himself from rehearsals, and
met with parents individually.
“Paul’s a pretty open guy — and I was aware
that there was stuff in the past he wasn’t proud
of,” said one parent, whose two sons are Rock
Academy grads. “But I can certainly say this:
Nobody does what Paul Green does. No rock
school does what the Paul Green Rock Academy
does. Nobody offers that experience.”
But some of the most successful musicians to
emerge from the School of Rock say nothing
was worth the verbal and emotional abuse they
experienced from Green.
Eric Slick, 38, a former All Star and now
drummer of the Philly-formed rock band Dr.
Dog, was also featured in the Air Mail story. A
drumming prodigy who grew up in Fairmount
— his grandfather was a jazz trombonist who
played with Billie Holiday — he had been
bullied for his weight at the Masterman School
before hoping he found a sanctuary at rock
school in 1998.
His talent only made him more of a target with
Green. Like on his 12th birthday, when Greensuddenly exploded in rage over his Pink Floyd
drum solo, spitting, cursing, throwing mics, and
kicking amplifiers.
“It’s this 'Whiplash' moment where I was like,
'Oh, I’m not safe here,' " said Slick, who now
lives in Nashville, Tennessee, referring to the
2014 film about a young jazz drummer and his
explosive teacher.
At his birthday dinner with his parents at
Spaghetti Warehouse after practice, Slick said
nothing.
“We were these misfit toys who didn’t fit in, who
weren’t jocks, who weren’t popular. And then
suddenly we have this opportunity to jam and
grow as musicians together,” he said. Talking, he
thought as a kid, would jeopardize that.
“I would be out of this friend group, and I
would be done,” Slick said.
It’s a sentiment shared by many former rock
school students.
“I feel like I really shut down,” said Lauren
Cohen, 37, of Doylestown, an All Star from 2002
to 2005, and a classical musician who performs
regularly in Philadelphia. “I feel like I shoved my
emotions down and everything that was telling
me, “This isn’t safe.” I kept ignoring it because I
made friends.”
The bullying from Green grew constant,according to Slick. About his weight, his
appearance, his high school sex life.
“I remember stuffing down all of these extreme
sad feelings I was having after the rehearsals,”
he said. “You just realized that every facet of
your life is manipulated in order for him to get
what he wants, which is to sell schools.”
He’s shared stories of rock school with his
current bandmates. “That’s not normal,” they
tell him.
Even now, while playing to tens of thousands,
Slick finds himself looking stage left, where
Green stood so long judging his every drum
groove and fill, set to erupt.
“The fear of his wrath still haunts me,” Slick said.
Kaleen Reading, 33, an All Star from 2006 to
2009 and drummer for the Philly-based punk
band Mannequin Pussy, said Green also often
denigrated her about her weight, and left her
fearful of pushing the tempo during
performances to this day.
In May, shortly after the Air Mail article was
published, Reading announced she would not
travel with her group on a series of European
summer tour dates. At the time, Reading wrote
on Instagram that her absence was due to
“mental health concerns” — and that the move
was necessary for the “longevity of meremaining in the music industry.”
Reading later told the Inquirer she needed the
time to process her own memories of rock
school, including verbal abuse.
“Paul Green is not a teacher,” she said. “He is an
abuser who can get results from yelling at
already talented kids he selected to advertise
his school.”
Sitting in a car outside her home before work
on a gray morning in July, the former student
who said Green began ongoing sexual contact
with her when she was 17, said she saw Green
as more than a teacher. At the time, Green
represented the only real adult male figure in
her life. Familiar with her battles with
depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder,
Green encouraged her dreams of becoming a
professional guitarist, she said.
“I would have done anything for his approval,”
the woman said.
At 17, she and Green would meet at a hotel
blocks from the former Race Street school. Or
Green would pick her up a short distance away,
so no one would see, and drive to a roadside,
budget motel with pirate and Hawaiian-themed
rooms called the Feather Nest Inn just over the
Ben Franklin Bridge. On tour, Green would
sometimes sneak her into his room, she said.The woman tried burying the memories of her
experience with Green, but struggled with
ongoing depression and feelings of inadequacy.
She said she suffered a nervous breakdown “for
weeks” last year, after she was first contacted by
the Air Mail reporter. Although not ready to
speak publicly at the time, the query forced a
reckoning.
“If I hadn’t been forced to confront it, I was
prepared to bury it forever,” she said.
Instead, with the help of a therapist, the woman
began to grapple with what she said Green had
put her through when she was underage.
“I let it all out,” said the woman.
She too has found strength in her old friends
from rock school, whose friendship she packed
away with the trauma. For years, she said could
not enjoy the experience of music without
“I always thought it was my fault,” she
continued. “Still, I have to remind myself that I was just a child.”
©2025 The Philadelphia Inquirer. Visit
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