The Berkshire district attorney’s office declined to prosecute a former teacher at a private high school for girls in Western Massachusetts who was accused of grooming and sexually assaulting students for decades.
Matthew S. Rutledge was accused of sexual misconduct by five women who allege he made unwelcome advances, sexually abused them, and exploited them while they attended Miss Hall’s School in Pittsfield between 1992 and 2010.
At least two of the women allege he groomed them beginning at 14 and 15, and then began sexual relationships with them after they turned 16 years old. In Massachusetts, the age of consent is 16, even when a teenager engages in a sexual relationship with an authority figure.
“The investigation concluded that, under Massachusetts’s General Law, no criminal conduct occurred,” prosecutors wrote in a statement Friday.
“Massachusetts law defines the age of consent as 16. While the alleged behavior is profoundly troubling, it is not illegal,” District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said in the statement.
Eric MacLeish, attorney for the women accusing Rutledge of sexual assault, said Melissa Fares, one of the women, had to find out that Rutledge was not being criminally charged from the press. He disputed that Fares and his other clients consented to sex with Rutledge, regardless of the state’s age of consent.
“We disagree strongly with the decision of the district attorney in this case,” he said in an interview.
MacLeish called Massachusetts’ age of consent law a “terrible law” that is “totally at odds with what is going on nationally.”
“How can anyone say there can be consent with a teacher 30 years older than a student?” he said.
A history teacher for more than three decades, Rutledge resigned in late March after being accused of grooming and sexually exploiting at least one former student for years.
“Investigations into allegations of child abuse are inherently complex and require scrutiny,” Shugrue said. “Our office, as well as our partner law enforcement agencies, will not rush investigation for the sake of coming to expeditious conclusion.”
The Berkshire DA’s office declined to provide further comment on the investigation. Rutledge could not be reached.
The Berkshire Eagle first reported the allegations of abuse at Miss Hall’s School in April.
The allegations became public when Fares, a former student, posted on an alumnae Facebook page that Rutledge had groomed her and sexually assaulted her when she attended the school between 2007 and 2010. Her decision to speak out led another former student, Hilary F. Simon, to describe her alleged grooming and assaults by Rutledge between 2001 and 2005 in the same private Facebook group.
Fares filed a civil suit against Rutledge and the school this week in Berkshire Superior Court, accusing her alma mater of negligence and Rutledge of assault.
Simon told the Globe in April that Rutledge kissed her and said he loved her at her graduation ceremony in 2005. She said an administrator was alerted in 2005 that Rutledge was acting inappropriately with her on campus, but no one at the school ever talked to her or her parents.
“The school was very, very well aware of what he was doing,” she said in an interview at the time. “And they didn’t stop him.”
Both Fares and Simon alleged that Rutledge began grooming them when they were underclassmen. In an April interview, Fares described Rutledge as a popular and charismatic teacher who began hitting on her when she was 15. His advances escalated to groping and explicit sexual comments. Shortly after she turned 17, he had sex with her in his classroom, she told the Globe. Simon gave a similar account of grooming and alleged sexual abuse.
Fares did not give consent for those initial sexual encounters, according to her lawsuit.
Both women say Rutledge’s conduct was an open secret at the close-knit school, which has less than 200 students. Simon said Rutledge groped her in a van full of students. When one student reported concerns to school administrators, they allegedly did not investigate. Instead, according to Simon, the school held an assembly — to warn students against spreading rumors.
“The school has had my name as a victim for 20 years,” Simon said. “And they never reached out or started an investigation until they were forced to.”
State Senator Joan Lovely has repeatedly proposed legislation that would close the consent loophole, raising the age from 16 to 18 when it involves sex with a person in a position of authority.
Lovely said in a statement this case is a “prime example” of why her legislation needs to be passed. She said her bill, S.1036, would remove the ability to consent in a school setting with adults in positions of authority or trust.
“Defendants could not use age of consent as a defense. We need to protect young people from sexual abuse and assault, and this bill will chill this behavior. People will hopefully think twice facing prosecution,” she said.
But Massachusetts legislators have not passed the law. Some states, like New Hampshire and Connecticut, have enacted such reforms, and others, like Ohio and Arkansas, have criminalized any sex between teachers and students in primary or secondary schools.
Julia Heaton, Miss Hall‘s current head of school, placed Rutledge on administrative leave after Fares’s attorney sent a letter to the school in March detailing the allegations. Rutledge resigned two days later. The school commissioned an independent probe from Aleta Law, a firm that specializes in investigating educational institutions. That inquiry is ongoing, and the school has pledged to release the full report once it is complete.
“We took immediate actions to protect our students’ safety, which is our most important responsibility,” Miss Hall’s said in a statement in April. “Mr. Rutledge was banned from campus and will not return.”