Folk singer and convicted sex offender Peter Yarrow will be honored by La Guardia HS for the Performing Arts next month, enraging parents and prompting a dozen “uncomfortable” students to refuse to sing for him.
Yarrow, a member of the legendary group Peter, Paul and Mary, was accused of engaging in a sex act with a 14-year-old girl in a Washington, DC, hotel room in front of her 17-year-old sister in 1970. He pleaded guilty to “taking indecent liberties” with the child and landed three months behind bars.
“Is it even legal for him to be in a school?” fumed one parent of a teen at La Guardia, the Upper West Side institution immortalized in the 1980 movie “Fame.”
“They have lots of famous alumni who went to that school. Is this really the best choice for someone to honor and be on stage with these children?”
Another parent said the administration’s choice of Yarrow, 75, for a “Hall of Fame” award at the Parents Association Gala was “disgusting,” and wondered aloud what school officials were thinking.
The event is scheduled to be hosted by broadcaster Al Roker at Lincoln Center on May 21.
It is being billed as “Peace, Love, and the Power of Song/Celebrating Peter Yarrow,” who co-wrote the song “Puff the Magic Dragon.’’
After word leaked that Yarrow would be honored, a La Guardia student wrote on the Facebook page for the school’s vocal majors that a teacher told her that any student could choose to decline to take part in the gala.
“IMPORTANT! So, I talked to [the teacher], and she said that whoever is uncomfortable performing in the gala honoring Peter Yarrow does not have to participate,” the student wrote, adding that anyone who didn’t want to sing with the folk star had to reply to her post with their real name and chorus information.
Within 24 hours, 10 girls and two boys wrote back that they didn’t want to sing for the performer.
Yarrow said in a statement to The Post on Monday that he was grateful for the pardon he received from President Jimmy Carter in 1981 and “I hope that my contrition and my efforts to help humanity over the years will allow me a measure of the public’s forgiveness.”
La Guardia administrators could not be reached.
This isn’t the first time Yarrow’s seamy past has come back to haunt him.
When an upstate congressional candidate announced that Yarrow would headline her fund-raiser last year, her Republican opponent reportedly bashed her for “having a convicted sex offender” associated with her campaign.
Additional reporting by Elizabeth Hagen