On Tuesday, former Miss Hall’s School teacher Matthew Rutledge was indicted on three counts of rape stemming from testimony delivered by his former students at the elite, private all-girls school. For the women who have put faces to years of rumor and quashed allegations at Miss Hall’s about Rutledge’s behavior — which investigations by WAMC and an independent law firm found to be an open secret on the cloistered campus — the day was years in the making.
“I came forward on March 27, 2024- So, almost exactly two years ago," Melissa Fares told WAMC. "And at first, obviously, nothing happened, and that was a really hard place to sit in for nearly two years. So, to be here now with these three charges, it's not just a legal moment, but obviously a personal one.”
Since Day 1, Fares has maintained that Rutledge raped her as a teen after grooming her while in a position of authority. When she first brought her experiences to the public by way of a lawsuit alongside fellow graduate and abuse survivor Hilary Simon against Rutledge and Miss Hall’s, Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue said a loophole in state age of consent laws meant the alleged acts were not technically criminal.
“What was most important is that I just did not give up on myself, and I did have to keep deciding, do I keep going, or do I just let it go? And I kept choosing to just go," Fares continued. "So, the moment feels earned, and the systems are still so flawed. And what infuriates me is I'm sure that not all survivors who come forward will have this moment and this kind of justice.”
Simon stresses that she, Fares, and other survivors of sexual abuse at the school have been carrying this burden for decades.
“For the first time today, I feel like the criminal justice system in the Berkshires is finally saying, we see what happened, we believe you, and now we're going to do something about it," she told WAMC. "It doesn't undo what he did to us, it doesn't undo what he did to the other survivors, and nothing can ever do that. But this is a step in the right direction, and for a very long time it felt like it would never come. So, today I feel something that I haven't felt in a long time. I feel like the work that Melissa and I have been doing for the last two years mattered, like speaking out mattered and refusing to be silent mattered.”
Since their ordeal has become public, Simon and Fares have worked with Berkshire legislators to push Massachusetts to update its age of consent laws. Simon says it’s time to make sure future generations are protected in ways she and her peers were not.
“Rep. Leigh Davis and other lawmakers entered a bill in the Massachusetts legislature to undo that loophole and make it so that there is an authority figure exception under the consent law, so teachers and other authority figures who abuse 16, 17-year-old students can no longer claim consent, because it's not consent, it's exploitation," she said. "And that bill is currently sitting in the Ways and Means Committee and will hopefully pass by the end of legislative session in July.”
The women are left with a complicated relationship with Miss Hall’s. It’s where they formed so many crucial relationships, and also the stage for some of their most painful traumas. Fares says the school is at a crossroads.
“It's important to remember that this wasn't just one person, that there were clear, repeated institutional failures at multiple levels by people in systems that were supposed to protect us," she told WAMC. "What happened here didn't happen in a vacuum, and there were tons of warning signs and reports, and Miss Hall’s failed to act in the way it should have. I think the future of the school depends on whether it's willing to take a hard, honest look at what went wrong and actually change. I think they have started to do that, and they have implemented certain different procedures and trainings on grooming, and what does grooming look like. They're having the important conversations.”
Simon says she feels a sea change in the years since she and Fares took their experiences to a larger audience.
“I think people are listening in a different way than they were even five years ago, and the wall of disbelief and pathways of reporting at these schools that survivors and the people that saw the abuse for so long. I think it's finally starting to crack,” she said.
As the women await the next step in the legal process — for Rutledge to be arraigned at Berkshire Superior Court in Pittsfield — they’re savoring a rare, hard-earned win in a tangled, painful tale.
“I have this picture in my head from yesterday, when the prosecutors came back into the room and told us that Matt would be indicted, and Hillary and I, we just looked at each other, welling up, and this slight smile- Like, holy you know what," Fares told WAMC. "How devastating that this happened to us, that we were failed by people who were supposed to protect us, but also, how freaking cool is it that we made this happen?”
