A former teacher at Miss Hall’s School, a private girls’ boarding school in western Massachusetts, was indicted by a Berkshire County grand jury on three counts of rape on Tuesday for allegedly assaulting two students.
The case had incited outrage about the teacher’s long history of alleged abuse and had prompted legislative efforts to change the state’s age of consent.
The teacher, Matthew Rutledge, resigned from the school in 2024 after the police began investigating him. But the Berkshire County district attorney announced later that year that he would not be charged with a crime because his accusers were 16 years old at the time they said he began having sex with them.
The age of consent in Massachusetts is 16, and state law does not currently criminalize sexual relations between teachers and students regardless of age.
Miss Hall’s hired a law firm to conduct an independent investigation of misconduct at the school. The firm substantiated many of the accusations against Mr. Rutledge, and the district attorney’s office assigned a team of investigators to look more closely at the case.
“Special prosecutors found Matthew Rutledge to have violated Massachusetts General Law,” the district attorney’s office said in a news release late Tuesday.
Details of the specific findings that led to the indictment were not made public. The report commissioned by the school, released last year and based on nearly 150 interviews, included descriptions of alleged assaults that happened when students were asleep, raising questions about how they could have consented.
A lawyer for Mr. Rutledge did not immediately respond to inquiries from a reporter. According to the district attorney’s office, Mr. Rutledge will be issued a summons and notified of a date for his arraignment on the charges.
Melissa Fares and Hilary Simon, former students at Miss Hall’s who pushed for the investigation of their former teacher, said in an interview Tuesday night that the indictment felt like meaningful progress after years of sharing their painful stories in hopes of finding justice.
Both women testified before the grand jury on Tuesday. They said that two of the rape charges involved Mr. Rutledge’s conduct with Ms. Fares, and one his conduct with Ms. Simon.
“It should have happened two years ago, but it’s happening now, and it’s a testament to how hard we fought,” Ms. Fares said. “This is a win, but there’s still so much heavy work to do, and unfortunately it’s fallen on survivors to do it.”
The report commissioned by leaders at Miss Hall’s found evidence that Mr. Rutledge had abused five girls over 20 years, and that the school had failed to properly investigate reports of misconduct, allowing the abuse to continue. The school, in Pittsfield, Mass., near the New York border, enrolls about 200 students in grades 9-12. Its leaders have previously apologized for the school’s role in the abuse and settled some related legal claims.
The case seized public attention last year, fueling a renewed push to change Massachusetts laws to establish clearer boundaries and acknowledge imbalances of power between young people and authority figures. The state is one of fewer than a dozen where laws allow adults to claim consenting sexual relationships with 16-year-olds.
A bill that would update the law to prevent sexual misconduct and abuse by educators is awaiting consideration in a Massachusetts House committee, said Leigh Davis, a state lawmaker from Berkshire County who sponsored the bill after hearing the stories of Miss Hall’s survivors.
Previous attempts to change the law were unsuccessful — failures that advocates and legislators have attributed to a persistent reluctance to acknowledge the prevalence of abuse by trusted mentors, coaches and teachers.
Ms. Fares and Ms. Simon testified in favor of the legislation last year. They said its passage remained critically important to prevent other victims from struggling to be heard.
As the law is written now, Ms. Simon said, “prosecutors are so reluctant to take these cases, because abusers have an escape hatch.”
“We want other survivors to feel they can come forward and know their stories matter,” she continued.
The district attorney’s office said the investigation into Mr. Rutledge’s alleged criminal conduct, “as well as any suspected criminal conduct of other staff members at Miss Hall’s School,” remains active. They urged anyone with information to contact the Berkshire State Police Detective Unit.
Jenna Russell is the lead reporter covering New England for The Times. She is based near Boston.
The post Massachusetts Teacher Charged With Raping Two Students appeared first on New York Times.
