When he arrived at Chetham's school of music in the early 1980s, Chris Ling immediately caused a stir with his white leather jacket, cowboy boots and luxuriant moustache. Wearing shirts often unbuttoned to reveal a medallion, the new strings teacher was hard to miss on the campus in the centre of Manchester.

He loved strong aftershave and fast cars and had a swaggering manner one former Chet's teacher likened to a "cockney wideboy" – though he was actually from Reading.

In his mid to late 20s at the time, Ling was famous for putting in extra hours with his pupils, inviting them to attend music courses at his house in Reading during the holidays and treating his young stars to meals out and (underage) drinks in the pub.

Ling was reputed to be a remarkable violin teacher, who quickly garnered a reputation for spotting superlative players and inspiring slavish devotion. He was said to be the most sought-after violin teacher on campus. Michael Brewer, found guilty last week of indecently assaulting an underage pupil at the school, used to refer to his proteges as Ling Strings.

One of Ling's victims, whom we call Woman A, said that despite his sexually abusing her from the age of 12 or 13, "he quickly became a guru in my eyes and I went from being a normal, happy child that hated practising the violin into a child that practised the violin between 10 and 12 hours a day".

Another pupil, Woman B, said that when she was 15 and a boarder at Chetham's, Ling sexually assaulted her at his house in Reading after a concert. From the evidence we have heard, it seems it was common for Ling to have his young charges to stay overnight at his house at the weekends and in the holidays.

Woman B recalls that the abuse began one night in the form of a "massage" which quickly crossed a line when he suggested she turn over and began massaging her breasts. "He made me feel like it was my fault," said the woman. "I didn't say anything because I felt like such an idiot."

He then put her hand on his genitals and showed her how to masturbate him, inserting his fingers in her vagina before ejaculating on her back. "It was repulsive," she said, "but I didn't know what to do. I was so confused. I didn't know what do think." The next day, she says, he told her that what had happened the previous night was "a very natural thing between a man and a woman".

She said: "I remember a feeling of being totally under his control, musically, emotionally. Students would be either in seventh heaven or totally depressed depending on how their lesson had gone that week. He could be so amazingly nice, and also so crushing, and I didn't have the maturity to resist his way of controlling us."

She complained that he used to invite her into the "coffee cupboard" near Michael Brewer's office at Chetham's, where he would pull her top down and play with her breasts. All of this attention was unwelcome and no consent was given, she said. She claims the abuse only stopped when she finally plucked up the courage to say no, after he tried to grope her at his house in Reading. She remembers his then girlfriend, Pip Clarke, a Chetham's alumna who later became his wife in 1989, was downstairs crying at the time.

Four of the women the Guardian spoke to said Ling began grooming them for sexual activity by asking them to play naked, and sometimes attempted to take naked photos of them in a makeshift photography studio he had set up in his house.

One pupil at the school between 1981 and 1988, whom we call Woman C, claimed he began grooming her when she was 15 or 16 by taking her for meals and drinks and taking her shopping for presents. She remembers him one day trying to buy her lingerie, but she was too embarrassed, so he bought her a coat instead. When at the age of 16 she went for private lessons at his house in Reading, he used to give her alcohol over lunch then force her to play strip poker.

Another pupil, Woman D, who was at Chet's from 1979 to 1986, said Ling used to buy her presents ("shower gel and things like that"). She says that very shortly after he arrived at the school, when she was 13 or 14, he would take her to a basement bar near Manchester's Royal Exchange. He was not her teacher but she remembers him "zooming in" on her as soon as he arrived and giving her some violin recordings he thought she would like. "He had me hook, line and sinker from there," she said. "I was desperately unhappy at Chet's, a chaotic and vulnerable teenager, and he clearly sensed that I was an easy target. I loved the attention he gave me."

She claimed she soon began visiting him regularly in the Mitre, a hotel near Manchester Cathedral where he would often stay at the start of his tenure at Chetham's. Though no sexual activity took place, she claims he passionately kissed her on more than one occasion. Their dalliance ended when he got together with Woman D's best friend at the time, called Pip Clarke, a schoolgirl who would later become his wife.

Violist Vicci Wardman, an ex-student of Chet's and then a friend of Clarke, said: "We knew what Ling was. As soon as our precious friend Pip got together with him our hearts sank. We saw instantly that she had been groomed and selected for yet another abusive relationship, and as time went on we became more and more dismayed. She was absolutely spellbound."

Another student, Woman E, said Ling sexually assaulted her in the late 1980s, when she was just 13. She remembers going for a music course at his house in Reading, along with Woman A and a number of other Ling students. On the last day, in a private lesson, she claims he introduced the idea of rewarding her good playing with money, and punishing any mistakes. "He devised a sort of game," she said, "and he almost made me feel as though I helped make it up.

"I think he offered me a pound for every phrase I got right, and then said that if I was getting a reward for doing well, there also ought to be a punishment for playing badly. He asked me something like, 'How would they punish bad girls in the olden days?' and I think I might have even volunteered that they would have got a smacked bottom. I remember then getting a bit wrong in my piece and him putting me over his lap, pulling up my dress and pulling down my pants and spanking me. It happened more than once."

Woman E said she was not sure what was happening. "But I think I knew that it was perverted and I felt horrible. I remember he said to me, 'Do you think you will tell your mum about this?' in such a way that I agreed that no, I wouldn't. And I remember being in the car on the way back knowing that I should tell my mum but couldn't."

Many of those we spoke to said that they felt unable to speak out about their abuse for fear of upsetting their parents, who had often spent vast amounts of money on sending them to Chetham's. Though some of its students were entitled to a grant, the full fees were said at one time to be higher even than those for Eton. A lot of the parents were not well off, but simply trying to do the best for a talented child in a world of which they knew little. For some of Ling's alleged victims, awareness of their parents' investment in their education added further guilt to what were already hugely complex feelings. Ian Pace, a pianist, musicologist and head of performance at City University, said the intimate nature of music teaching offered particular opportunities to would-be abusers. "Musical education involves deeply intimate and personal relationships between teacher and pupil, and the pupil's musicianship becomes viewed as a reflection of their personality in general. Children studying music are required to engage with and project intense adult emotions, are seen and judged physically as well as aurally, and are catapulted into a cloistered and often solitary world, surrounded by powerful guru-like figures with whom they engage on a one-to-one basis, and who may have the potential to make or break their future career. Many people outside of the classical music world are unaware of this, and the immense potential for cruel exploitation – of a sexual or psychological nature – which lies therein."

Woman E also remembered Ling commenting on what she wore, complaining if her tops were too baggy, and asking her to wear certain dresses and skirts again. At the music course where he spanked her, she claims he asked her to wear a dress he particularly liked and instructed her to stand by a fan so that the skirt flared up.

Woman A remembered that aged 13 she started having lessons at his house in Manchester after Ling convinced her father she would be "more comfortable" there. She claimed: "I arrived at one lesson to find that he had clothes laid out on the bed, which he proceeded to dress me up in. In another lesson, he was clearly obsessed with my breasts and I remember feeling violated but was too young to really understand what was going on." He used to put his hand under her T-shirt, fondling her nascent breasts, she recalled.

Another of Ling's pupils, Woman F, who attended Chetham's as a sixth former between 1988 and 1990, claimed that when she was 16 Ling asked her something like: "If I told you that you had to play naked in your lesson in front of me, for me to tell you what was wrong with your technique, what would you say?" Woman F refused and then, along with another girl, discreetly asked around Ling's other students to see if he had also behaved improperly towards them. She claims they then took this "evidence" to John Vallins, who was head at Chetham's from 1974 to 1992. "We were disgusted with what we heard and it was damning enough for us to go to the headteacher," she said.

Vallins, who gave evidence for Brewer at the recent trial, said he had "no recollection" of this. He said: "I am disturbed, extremely unhappy at the suggestion that I said I would look into something but nothing was done. My clear recollection was that the first time I knew of anything with Chris Ling was when the police came to the school. I am profoundly distressed at the suggestion that if I had good reason to suspect any improper behaviour towards any pupil, I would not have acted on it."

Woman F recalls when Ling was confronted with certain allegations, he said: "Why would I do that when I'm getting married this summer?" In the summer of 1989, he married Clarke, then 21.

When one other girl plucked up the courage to complain about Ling, her complaints were brushed off instantly by Ling, recalls Woman F.

It was only around Christmas in 1990 that evidence of Ling's alleged behaviour reached the police. One of his pupils confided in her mother about the sustained sexual abuse she had suffered at Ling's hands since she was just 12, and at least 10 of his female students were interviewed by police, including Woman A, Woman B and Woman E. The women say Chetham's tried to keep the scandal under wraps, but in March 1991 the Sunday People wrote a story about the police investigation entitled "Music girl's maestro in sex probe". In the article, Ling protested his innocence. His lawyer was quoted as saying: "More credence could be attached to rumours that Saddam Hussein has won the Nobel peace prize."

Greater Manchester police say they are trying to find out why the investigation was closed and have not yet had time to locate paper records from the time. Some of Ling's alleged victims said they were told police could not extradite him from the US for questioning. One woman who knew him in America told the Guardian that he missed his mother's funeral because he was scared that he would be arrested if he set foot on UK soil.

Others said they got the impression that police felt there was insufficient evidence, particularly after internal medical examinations on some girls, including Woman B, showed no evidence of penetration.

Vallins confirmed that police had come to the school in the early 1990s to interview staff and students. He said detectives later informed him they had heard serious allegations that Ling had abused a number of teenage pupils.

Vallins, who writes the Guardian's Country Diary from Somerset, said: "At the end of it all, the sergeant came to me at home and she said – and you'll understand, I'm sure, it is fixed on my memory – 'you'll be glad to know that we didn't discover any incidents on the school premises. [But] we did discover some instances in Chris Ling's flat where he gave lessons at half-term, maybe in girls' homes.' At that point either she told me or I formed the impression there was something that would lead to a criminal charge, but by then he had left the country."

A spokeswoman for Chetham's said school records showed Ling stopped teaching at the school in the summer of 1990. When the Guardian put to her allegations made by the women who spoke to us about him, she said: "Due to the records retention policy that Chetham's adheres to, the length of time that has passed since the alleged incidents you have detailed, and the fact that this relates to a time before the current school management at Chetham's, I am sorry that I have no more information I can draw on to help shed any light on this. The only relevant records we have from 1989 onwards are our student listings. These show that Ling was no longer a freelance musician at CSOM from the summer of 1990 onwards. If anyone has any information relating to allegations of historic abuse they should take it to the police." These days, Ling appears to have made a new life in the US. He lives with his family in a handsome three-storey townhouse overlooking the San Fernando valley in Los Angeles.

When our reporter visited his home, a neighbour confirmed "an English guy and his wife, a violinist" lived next door. When Ling came home in a black Jaguar, he confirmed he had received an email from the Guardian asking him for comment on allegations about his behaviour at Chetham's. He said he had nothing to say and asked the reporter to get off his property and never return, before closing the garage door. Since 1992, Ling has run an agency representing conductors and classical soloists. While he enjoys an affluent lifestyle in American, the alleged damage his victims say he caused lingers on.

As Woman D notes: "By the time I left at 17 (like Frances Andrade, I threw in the towel a year early) I was a fractured, disordered, unbalanced mess. Much of my adult life, despite career success and an outward patina of calm authority, has been marked by suicidal depression, anxiety, self-harm and a total inability to form meaningful adult relationships. Responsibility for much of this I land squarely at Chet's door.

"I hope others will also now feel that, to honour Frances Andrade's memory, they might now seize their moment – however terrifying – that she might not have died in vain."

Greater Manchester police have asked anyone with information about possible abuse at Chetham's to call 101 and quote reference 1532 31/01/2013