A former private school teacher known as Mr. Wonderful has been charged with three counts of rape involving two of his former students. Matthew Rutledge, 64, walked into Berkshire Superior Court in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on Wednesday for his arraignment. He pleaded not guilty to the felony charges.
Former students Melissa Fares and Hilary Simon accused the teacher of abusing them while they attended Miss Hall's School. The alleged abuse took place between 2000 and 2010. The allegations claim Rutledge groomed and repeatedly abused the teenage students over several years.
"For a long time, I was living inside trauma without fully understanding it," Fares said in a statement shared by the Berkshire District Attorney's Office. "It was over the last several years that I began piecing together the truth of what happened to me: that Matt Rutledge had used me, abused me, and raped me. That I had been groomed and threatened into silence by a serial predator. That my youth wasn't my youth at all."
Simon said she was 15 years old when Rutledge first began pursuing her. She noted that the abuse continued for years even after she left the campus.
"I fought this privately for 20 years," Simon stated. "I have been fighting it publicly for two. Before any of this, I was just a normal person. A lawyer. A wife and a mother. A woman trying to build a life on top of something I had buried. And then Melissa Fares called. I did not know Melissa. I picked up the phone, and I told her I had been waiting for that call for 20 years."
According to a report prepared for Miss Hall’s School, Rutledge allegedly told students to make way for Mr. Wonderful as he moved through the hallways. Fares and Simon said they discovered in 2024 that they had similar accounts of his behavior and decided to pursue charges together.
The district attorney's office initially declined to move forward with the criminal case. Prosecutors cited the Massachusetts age of consent law at the time. The state law allowed an adult to have sex with a person over the age of 16.
The two women then pushed for new legislation to close the legal loophole. They advocated making it strictly illegal for a teacher to have sex with a student regardless of the general age of consent. Rutledge is now charged under separate rape statutes following a grand jury indictment.
Speaking at a press conference following the arraignment, Fares claimed that school leadership was well aware of Rutledge’s alleged behavior. "Miss Hall’s School knew," she told reporters. "This whole school knew. They enabled a culture of abuse for decades. They failed us, our families and every girl trusted them to protect her. They must also be held accountable."
Miss Hall’s School released a statement acknowledging the severe impact the situation has had on its community. "Wednesday’s arraignment was an important and painful moment for our community," the school said. "We will continue to cooperate fully with authorities. We are sorry for the harm that survivors have experienced and the impact on our community."