A sexual abuse scandal at a Pittsfield, Massachusetts private all-girls boarding school is growing. In March, Miss Hall’s School graduate Melissa Fares came forward about allegedly being preyed on by history teacher Matthew Rutledge over a decade ago. Rutledge – who taught at the school for over 30 years – was placed on leave and then resigned. In a letter from the Miss Hall’s board of trustees released Monday, the school acknowledged that three students have now come forward about their own experiences with Rutledge from 2001 to 2010. Miss Hall’s has pledged to conduct its own investigation into the claims and cooperate with authorities. Attorney Eric MacLeish is representing Fares and the other two students. In the 1990s, he made his name working with victims of sexual abuse at the hands of Boston area Catholic clergy, and has taken on similar cases at other private boarding schools. MacLeish tells WAMC that the situation at Miss Hall’s is unlike any he’s encountered before- and that other faculty members may have engaged in predatory behavior.
MACLEISH: I can't really talk about its dimensions, because it's evolving every day. We've talked to so many former students, we've talked to a number of victims of Matthew Rutledge. His predatory behavior goes back to the time he first started school in 1991. So, it's really evolving. People are coming forward, but they're coming forward slowly. Some people are scared. Some people who are not victims have told us that there were other teachers involved apart from Rutledge who engaged in sexual misconduct with students, and there are just some who, for example, tried to alert the administration at Miss Hall’s about what Rutledge was doing, and how the school didn't respond. So, this is a really unfortunate situation where according to the information that we've gotten, there were complaints about Rutledge going way, way back. Nothing was done. I think in 2023, some of his duties were curtailed after alumni went to the head. But this guy was allowed to basically engage in predatory conduct and feast on these students, these students who are really, ideal victims for someone who's charismatic as Mr. Rutledge. And they were severely damaged. I mean, there's carnage here. I mean, people's lives were changed dramatically. I can't talk about all the details, because some people are slow in coming forward and I don't want to say anything that would lead someone to identify any of them. Even, I don't use their names, even their class. Some people are worried that they could be identified. So, this is an evolving situation.
WAMC: Can you give us a sense of the timeline? Now that these allegations have been made, and you're doing this work, speaking to folks who allege they were victims of Mr. Rutledge, what sort of timeline can we expect from this process?
If you're referring to the timeline of when people will come forward, that's always difficult to say. Everybody's different. Every victim of sexual abuse is different. I've been doing this for a long, long time, 30 years, and I'm always surprised, and – not really surprised anymore – but it takes people a while to be willing to come forward. So, I can't give an accurate timeline because everyone's different. We're talking to people who are scared, quite frankly, of coming forward. They're ashamed. They're worried what their parents will think if they if they identify themselves publicly. So, we really can't give a timeline. I think what we're going to do is, the school is going to prepare an investigative report. We're also going to prepare one too, and we will make sure that the people that want to be heard with their names will have a chance to be heard, and those who don't, we'll let them be heard if they want to do it anonymously. But I can't give you a timeline.
When it comes to the final form of what this legal action will be, do you expect it to be focused on just Mr. Rutledge, on the school as well? Who are going to be the folks on other side of the docket when this makes it to court?
Well, we were just retained last week and no one's filed any lawsuits yet. Sometimes we file lawsuits, sometimes we don't have to. I don't know what's going to happen with that. Our focus right now is not on lawsuits. Our focus on is helping to support the people who've come forward, referring them to great organizations like [Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network], the sexual abuse hotline. And any of your listeners who have experienced their own sexual trauma and are listening to this and are triggered should think about contacting RAINN, they're easily accessible on the internet. So right now, our focus is helping our clients, we now have three, and assisting them and assisting others who've come forward, and making them, let them know that there's a lot of support for them out there. There's now a private Facebook group that has got over 600 members in less than a week of people who are talking to each other. It's amazing what this sisterhood is doing. These people are all supporting each other.
Now, given your vast experience in this kind of work, does this sort of follow familiar waymarks about how institutions handle sexual misconduct allegations? Does this remind you of sort of other classic examples of similar allegations?
Yes, it does. I mean, this is similar to many other cases that we've handled. We've had cases against almost every- well, a majority of the prep schools in New England. We filed lawsuits against many of them. And that was a really, actually a really good process, because many of them like Choate and Hotchkiss and St. George's and St. Paul's, they had first class investigators, and the reports were made public. We have not been able to secure a commitment from Miss Hall’s right now that their report will be public. It looks from the letter that went out [Monday] that it may be one that's edited by the board of trustees or the administration- That's not the way it's supposed to work. You're supposed to release the entire report. So, we'll be doing our own. But the school has hired an organization we're not really familiar with it, and they'll do theirs, and we'll do ours. I just hoped that they release their report to everyone. And I also hope that the report that the school is doing will focus not only on Matthew Rutledge, but allegations against other teachers at Miss Hall’s, and will focus also on whether there were failures in leadership. And you know, it's really early right now, but we believe that there were very significant failures in leadership in trying to address what Mr. Rutledge was doing. He was there for over 30 years, 33 years, and he liked taking risks when he was engaging in sexual misconduct. And it's just really clear, even though we're doing this for a week, it's clear that people at the school knew what was happening or should have know what was happening.
You've alluded to this, but at this point, are there suspicions that there are other faculty members who may have conducted similar behavior at Miss Hall’s?
Yes, we've received reports about other faculty members. You know, everybody's going at their own pace. When it's appropriate, we’ll notify either the police if there's a prosecutable crime, and potentially Miss Hall’s as well. We don't want anyone who has coming forward to feel as though they're going to be silenced or they're going to be retaliated against. There's actually quite a bit of fear out there. That makes it somewhat different from some other cases that I've had.
Can you speak to that- When you talk about that fear being different from other cases, what does that mean to you?
Well, this is evolving, again. And right now, I would say that there is a really significant amount of fear among a lot of people. Some of it is fear that they could be retaliated against by the school, some of it is shame, embarrassment. I talked to a woman this morning who was upset that she knew things as a child at the school about Mr. Rutledge and didn't come forward. She feels as though she could have prevented sexual abuse if she had. So, there's a lot of really strong emotions and quite a bit of fear, which I think is unusual, in terms of the cases that we've handled. I mean, there's also this growing body of alumna who are supporting those who are coming forward, and that's really moving to see. I haven't seen a case where social media and Facebook groups have played the role so quickly that they played at Miss Hall’s. But this is a sisterhood of incredible women who are out there supporting those who've come forward, like my client, Melissa Fares, as well as those who are not yet public but have also recounted stories of horrific abuse, either by Mr. Rutledge or others.
You were talking about how the school possibly might not fully release a public draft of their investigation. Can you offer sort of a comparison point to other institutions that you've worked against? Like, how is Miss Hall’s responding to this, based on your experience?
At this point, it's premature to say whether Miss Hall’s will release the report. We've had conversations about that. The letter [Monday] didn't seem to indicate that the entire report, the investigative report of Miss Hall’s, will be released. That's in contrast – if that's the case, and I hope they change their mind, and we'll be urging them to change their mind – but our schools like St. George's released a 100-page report done by a skilled investigator. St. Paul's also released four different reports, the entire reports that were undertaken by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger. And the same thing is true with Choate, and the same thing is true with Hotchkiss. So, what we're really hoping for here is not a sanitized summary of what the investigators found but a full report that looks at all aspects of this case, including failures in leadership, and the entire report is released. I don't think we know yet whether the school has committed to that.
Of course, as you've mentioned, this is early days in every way- But from your vantage point, how big could this possibly be? I mean, it seems like this thread that's being pulled that is already yielding more than most people expected.
It's hard to make a comparison. In St. Paul's, for example, there were 22 faculty members that had credible allegations of sexual misconduct. At Choate, the number was in excess of 10, at Hotchkiss, in excess of 10. You know, it's amazing to me that so much of this happened at boarding schools, and I went to St. George's. I was expelled, but I went to St. George's. And I think one of the things you have to look at is that these schools were very isolated. They were not really parts of the community and they didn't comply with the mandatory abuse reporting law. I mean, even now, they don't comply with it. So, this is very troubling. If you're a predator, and you want to have access to vulnerable individuals, you know, people used to say, well, you could become a Catholic priest, but you could also become a boarding school teacher, because you have access to children basically 24 hours a day. You live in dorms with them, you're a dorm parent, you go to the gym with them, you eat with them, you take them on field trips- I mean, this was a place where there was unlimited opportunities to molest children. And I think that this is something that the entire boarding school industry needs to look at and address. Are they really on top of this? I think some schools are, I think others aren't. It's too soon to say whether Miss Hall’s now is on top of this, but I can say that from the reports that we received, they were not taking reports from students and others about Mr. Rutledge as seriously as they should have.
Lastly, do you have any sort of recommendation or advice to this community as it prepares to undertake what will likely be an extremely painful look in the mirror?
That's a good question. Yeah, we're obviously concerned not only about our clients, we're concerned about the students at the school. The school has referred individuals who may have been sexually abused to RAINN, which I think is a good first step. They've referred alumni to RAINN, the rape crisis hotline, which is another good step. But you know, there's going to be a lot of trauma here. There's going to be a lot of emotions. We haven't been criticized by any alumni yet for the work that we're doing on behalf of our clients, and that's unusual. Usually, we get criticized by a group that are just blindly loyal to the good old school where the predator worked. Mr. Rutledge was a charismatic teacher. He was head of the history department, people loved him in class, and I expect there's going to be some pushback at some point, but not right now. No one is questioning what our clients are saying on social media and what will ultimately be publicly entered to the police. No one is questioning that at all.
