The Observer

Hello, it's Ada and you're listening to the slow newscast from The Observer.

This week, a reckoning with the past.

Earlier this year, the Observer's culture correspondent Vanessa Thorpe reported on a story of

historic abuse at the prestigious Guildhall School of Music and Drama. The case happened in the

1980s and left the student with deep scars. Like many public institutions across the UK,

Guildhall has had to reckon with a past where abuse by staff was either ignored or dismissed.

So when a second former student came forward to tell their story, this time from the 1990s,

how would the institution respond?

Reporter Vanessa Thorpe and I have been investigating.

Over to Vanessa.

So I always go back to this postcard that was an invitation.

The chosen image in the front, it's a cartoon, a caricature of a long table of men in tales

with the silver plates in the middle of the table

who are turning around to the person entering the room

as though that person is about to be served for dinner.

Clara Sanabras is a musician and vocalist.

She found the postcard earlier this year

at the bottom of a box she'd forgotten about.

She'd been given this postcard by a man almost 30 years earlier,

and now she wanted him to read it.

I went to a concert he gave live and presented him with irrefutable evidence in the form of a postcard that he gave me,

...