Education Secretary Cites 1-in-10 Abuse Statistic as Interlochen Arts School Report Details 70 Abuse Allegations

Education Secretary Linda McMahon told CNN's "State of the Union" that a government study found 1 in 10 schoolchildren will be sexually molested before they finish high school.

"This stat will probably blow your mind. It did mine," McMahon said, according to the New York Post. "Statistics show 1 in 10 children before they finish high school will have been sexually molested in school."

McMahon didn't cite a specific new study by name on air. The Post contacted the Department of Education for the exact data and methodology behind the claim and did not receive further detail in the reporting available. The closest match in the public record is a report prepared for Congress more than two decades ago, which found over 4.5 million children experienced sexual misconduct ranging from inappropriate comments to criminal abuse, and concluded roughly 1 in 10 students face some form of it. Whether McMahon was citing that decades-old figure, an updated version of it, or something else entirely remains unclear from her CNN appearance.

McMahon singled out California as a particular problem. She said the state's school districts have a pattern of quietly transferring accused teachers instead of firing them.

"Instead of firing those teachers, those teachers just get sent to another school," she said. "And it's not part of their record or anything."

That claim tracks with reporting the Post published last month, which found California risked losing $50 million in Title I federal funding after the Trump administration moved to penalize the state for failing to properly discipline abusive teachers. McMahon said the administration has been "really cracking down" on the practice, sometimes called "passing the trash" in education circles, though she did not detail specific enforcement actions taken against particular districts in the CNN interview.

A parallel case: Interlochen

While McMahon was making her case on national television, a separate story was already working through a much more documented version of the same problem. Interlochen Center for the Arts, the prestigious Michigan boarding school and summer camp that helped launch the careers of Josh Groban, Norah Jones, Chappell Roan and others, released an independent report last month detailing decades of sexual abuse on its campus.

According to NPR, the report documents roughly 70 allegations of sexual abuse by nearly 50 adults employed or affiliated with the school between the 1950s and the 2010s. Interlochen commissioned the investigation from Sanghavi Law Office in 2024 after an alumna came forward about abuse by a longtime faculty member and administrator dating to the 1970s.

The report names convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell among the alleged abusers. Epstein was a school alum and benefactor. NPR reported earlier this year that Epstein met and recruited two teenagers on the Interlochen campus, though the report makes clear the abuse problem at the school extends far beyond Epstein and Maxwell.

The report describes conditions that let abuse continue for decades: students living apart from their families with limited outside contact, one-on-one time between adults and minors, and a culture where victims were afraid to come forward. That structural description echoes McMahon's broader complaint that institutions built around trust and isolation from parents create openings for abusers, and that those institutions have historically protected adults over children when allegations surface.

Paul Busch, who says he was sexually abused by his ballet teacher at Interlochen in 2005 when he was 16, spoke publicly about his experience for the first time in the NPR report. He said he wanted to prove he was "good enough" and "worthy of love," conditions he said made him vulnerable. Interlochen told NPR it is "fundamentally different" today and pointed to new safety measures, including a team of counselors, social workers and a psychologist. Busch said that response falls short. "They get to say, 'Case closed,'" he said. "That is completely unacceptable because, guess what, my life is still open."

What's unresolved

McMahon's 1-in-10 figure needs a clearer citation. If the Department of Education is relying on a statistic that's more than 20 years old, that should be stated plainly rather than presented as a fresh finding from "the general education statistics that were afforded to us," as McMahon put it. The department had not, as of the Post's reporting, provided the underlying study or its methodology.

Separately, California's exposure to losing $50 million in Title I funds is a live enforcement matter, not a settled one. Whether the state changes its teacher-discipline and reporting practices, or fights the funding threat, is the next concrete thing to watch. At Interlochen, the report's release doesn't end the story for survivors like Busch, who says the school's private response to a private investigation isn't accountability, it's paperwork.