2023-08-07 16:22:02
HOUSTON (AP) — Renowned opera singer David Daniels and his husband have pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting another singer in Houston.
Daniels, 57, of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Scott Walters, 40, pleaded guilty Friday after a jury had been assembled for the trial the couple was facing on felony first-degree aggravated sexual assault.
Both pleaded guilty to sexual assault of an adult, a second-degree felony, and were sentenced to eight years probation and required to register as sex offenders.
Daniels, Walters and their attorney declined to comment after the hearing.
Daniels and Walters were indicted in 2019 after Samuel Schultz filed a criminal complaint in 2018 alleging the two assaulted him in 2010 after he met them at a Houston Grand Opera reception when he was a graduate student at Rice University. .
Schultz said he was invited to his apartment and given a drink that caused him to pass out. Schultz stated that he woke up alone and naked.
The Associated Press does not typically name sexual assault victims unless they publicly identify themselves, as Schultz has done to help others who fear reporting an assault.
Daniels, a countertenor, was fired as a professor at the University of Michigan and removed from a production of Handel’s “Orlando” by the San Francisco Opera following allegations of sexual assault by a student at the university in 2018.
The lawsuit in that case, filed in federal court in Michigan, claims Daniels groped the student and sent and solicited sexual photos. The lawsuit also alleges that Daniels served the student alcohol, gave him sleeping pills and sexually touched him.
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