A graduate of Miss Hall’s School, a private school for girls in the Berkshires, is suing her alma mater and a former administrator for allegedly allowing a teacher to remain on staff despite being repeatedly warned he was targeting girls as young as 15 for alleged sexual exploitation.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in Berkshire Superior Court on Tuesday, Melissa Fares alleges that the teacher, Matthew S. Rutledge, began grooming her in 2007, when she was a 15-year-old sophomore at the Pittsfield school, and sexually abused and raped her on campus, including at his residence, until she graduated in 2010.
Fares is also suing Rutledge for civil assault and battery.
The Berkshire Eagle first reported the allegations of abuse at Miss Hall’s School in April. That month, a spokesperson for Berkshire District Attorney Timothy J. Shugrue said the office was conducting a child abuse investigation after Fares and a second graduate described their interactions with Rutledge while attending the school. The school’s board of trustees hired a law firm to investigate conditions on campus during the years cited by Fares and other former students.
In a statement on Wednesday, Miss Hall’s School declined to address the lawsuit’s allegations.
“Out of respect for former students involved, and to maintain the integrity of the legal process, we do not publicly comment on the details of pending litigation,” a school spokesman, David Smith, wrote in an email. “The safety and well-being of our students — past and present — remain our highest priority. We are fully committed to learning the truth about what occurred so that we may extend support to any members of our community who were harmed, and continue our efforts to safeguard the well-being of our students today and in the future.”
Fares is suing the school, as well as Jeannie Norris, the head of school between 2007 and 2010, and three other school employees for negligence and sexual harassment, according to the lawsuit, filed by attorneys Kristin M. Knuuttila and Roderick MacLeish.
Rutledge could not be reached for comment. He is not facing criminal charges.
The lawsuit alleges that top administrators were repeatedly told about inappropriate behavior by Rutledge, but failed to act.
“In February 2008, parents of a former Miss Hall’s student wrote to Norris to alert her to Rutledge’s ‘unmistakably inappropriate’ behavior toward their daughter. They urged Norris ‘to take the necessary steps to protect other young women,’” the lawsuit states.
Norris met with the parents, asked if they were going to sue, and assured them she would handle their concerns, according to the lawsuit.
That same year, when Fares was considering not returning to the school, Norris met with Fares’s mother and asked whom her daughter trusted on campus.
“Her mother replied, ‘Mr. Rutledge,’“ the lawsuit alleges. “A red flag should have gone up for Norris immediately. Instead, despite knowing that Rutledge’s misconduct with a former student was so ‘unmistakably inappropriate’ that Norris feared a lawsuit against the School, Norris decided that Rutledge was an appropriate person to persuade Melissa to stay at Miss Hall’s.”
Since Fares and a second student, Hilary F. Simon, publicly disclosed their allegations of grooming and sexual assault on campus, more details have emerged about Rutledge’s interaction with students, according to the lawsuit.
In the mid-1990s, a student told the head of school at the time that “she felt threatened by Rutledge,” according to the lawsuit. The student was also allegedly abused by him, the lawsuit claims.
In 1997, a student was expelled for “expressing suspicions about Rutledge and another student,” the lawsuit alleges.
Rutledge wrote “overly familiar and inappropriate public missives to students” that were published in the school yearbooks, according to the lawsuit. In 2003, he wrote about running with Student B “in the ever darkening dusk,” separated from the rest of the team, and the student “confessing her fears” to him. Under the cross country team photograph in the 2005 yearbook, Rutledge referred to Student B as his “co-pilot” and wrote about “missing her heart.”
In 2004, a student walked into Rutledge’s classroom and saw him “with Student B’s legs draped over his and massaging her breasts,” the lawsuit alleges. The student reported what she saw to a top administrator, according to the lawsuit.
In 2005, a graduate allegedly told the dean of students that Rutledge “kissed Student B and told her that he loved her.”
Also in 2005, a school nurse reported “red flag” behavior to Norris when she saw Rutledge “talking privately to Student C with his hand on her bare shoulder,” the lawsuit alleges. The parents of that student told Norris that Rutledge had engaged in “unmistakably inappropriate” behavior with her, the lawsuit alleges.
According to the lawsuit, Fares began receiving “special attention” from Rutledge during her sophomore year. He asked her about her sexual interests and gave her nicknames, including “Little One,” “Little Girl,” “Little Melissa,” “Piglet,” “Protector,” and “Protectee,” the lawsuit alleges.
At Rutledge’s request, Norris allowed him to become Fares’s adviser instead of a staffer originally assigned to her, increasing his access to her academically and personally, the lawsuit alleges.
“At all times, there was a substantial power differential as Rutledge was Melissa’s teacher and advisor,” the lawsuit states. “She was a teenager and was vulnerable to a grown man who, as her teacher and advisor could, among other things, determine her grades, grant her freedom to go off-campus or give her other privileges, and write summer internship and college recommendations.”
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe.