{"id":210081,"date":"2026-04-26T05:08:46","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/210081\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T05:08:46","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:08:46","slug":"news-12-connecticut-former-massachusetts-boarding-school-teacher-accused-of-sexually-assaulting-student-from-wilton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/210081\/","title":{"rendered":"News 12 | Connecticut | Former Massachusetts Boarding School Teacher Accused Of Sexually Assaulting Student From Wilton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">A former teacher at a prestigious Massachusetts boards school pleaded not guilty Wednesday to sexually assaulting two former students, including one originally from Wilton.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Matthew Rutledge is accused of assaulting the women in the early 2000s at Miss Halls School in Pittsfield.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">The victims say Rutledge started grooming them when they were 15 years old and maintained a relationship with them after they graduated.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Former News 12 Connecticut intern Melissa Fares told Vanity Fair that Rutledge even visited her at her family&#8217;s home.<\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Prosecutors initially declined to bring charges in 2024 because Massachusetts law does not make it a crime for teachers to have a sexual relationship with a student over the age of consent which is 16. <\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">&#8220;I think a lot of people don&#8217;t understand that it takes a long time to understand that what you have lived through is trauma. So many survivors have been groomed,&#8221; says Fares. <\/p>\n<p data-rich-text-paragraph=\"true\">Fares and another victim, Hillary Simon, have been lobbying Massachusetts lawmakers to change the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former teacher at a prestigious Massachusetts boards school pleaded not guilty Wednesday to sexually assaulting two former&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-210081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}