Survivors have spent over a decade telling anyone at the State House who would listen that Massachusetts needs a law to protect children from abuse by people in their life in positions of power, and they say a provision in the fiscal 2027 state budget finally gets their pleas across the finish line.
When Gov. Maura Healey signed the spending bill on July 9, she signed into law both a policy she said addresses “abuse of power” by adults like teachers and coaches entrusted with the care of young people, and another that eliminates the statute of limitations in rape cases where new DNA evidence identifies the offender.
“I was failed — failed by Massachusetts, failed by the adults who were supposed to protect me. For a long time, the law failed kids like me too,” survivor Melissa Fares said at a press conference Friday. “This law doesn’t give me back my youth. It doesn’t give survivors back what was taken from them. But it closes a loophole that never should have existed.”
Former Miss Hall’s School students, Fares and Hilary Simon, stood alongside state and public officials at a ceremonial bill signing at the State House held by the Healey administration to promote the policies. A large group of officials packed Nurses Hall, including Healey, Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll, Massachusetts State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble, Reps. Leigh Davis, John Lawn and Hannah Kane, Sens. Joan Lovely and Lydia Edwards, and Berkshire District Attorney Timothy Shugrue, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Essex District Attorney Paul Tucker.
Fares and Simon have both alleged that their former teacher at the Pittsfield all-girls boarding school, Matthew Rutledge, groomed and raped them. Rutledge has pleaded not guilty; He was indicted in March on three counts of rape, according to Boston Globe reporting.
“My teacher began grooming me when I was 15,” Simon, who came to Massachusetts at the age of 14 for boarding school, said. “By the time I was 16, the law of Massachusetts treated me as though I could consent to the man who had power over me.”
Fares and Simon have been working for the past two years on getting the law changed, Simon said, but “We weren’t the first. Survivors came to this building years ago and said what we have been saying to people who were not ready to listen. Every door we walked through, one of them pried open first.”
The new law dictates that people under the age of 18 would be unable to legally consent to sexual conduct with an adult who holds, or has held, supervisory or custodial authority over them. A redrafted Sen. Joan Lovely amendment in the Senate’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal slotted the policy into the final budget, which also implements an up to 20-year sentence for rape and up to 10 years for indecent assault and battery, Lovely said on the Senate floor in May.
“As a survivor at the age of six, it’s hard to talk about. You don’t — it never leaves you. It’s always there,” Lovely said Friday.
“As a freshman senator, I sat in caucus and listened to colleagues questioning whether young people who came forward were telling the truth,” Lovely recalled. “Fourteen years ago, I had colleagues who, when we were passing that [statute of limitations] bill, said, 'That doesn’t happen. They’re making it up.’ I was furious, and that’s what propelled me to do this work, to find my voice to work on this and prevent this.”
Lawn, who was among several speakers who pointed to Lovely’s work on the issue, said that he and the Salem Democrat “share a club that we wish we didn’t belong to. I confided in her years ago. We worked on this behind the scenes, until I was even able to share my story. But she knew.”
“All of us, everyone here, everyone out there, wants to send a message that in Massachusetts, if you harm a child, you will never walk away from that responsibility and the harm you’ve done,” Lawn said. In May, Lawn wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe calling on the state to eliminate the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse and opening up about his experience as a survivor.
Speaking of the other provision signed into law, Healey said the state for too long “allowed the clock to run out” on unresolved rape cases. Rep. Adam Scanlon spoke about a case in which after 35 years, DNA identified the man responsible for assaults in a Framingham department store dressing room. Prosecution was possible because the attacker had left Massachusetts, Scanlon said, pausing the statute of limitations.
“But for many other survivors, the same DNA breakthrough would not have benefited them. Their attackers could have been identified and still escaped justice, not because the evidence failed, not because law enforcement failed, but because the law failed them,” Scanlon said. He spoke on the House floor in April about the provision, noting that Massachusetts had a 15-year statute of limitations for most sexual assault cases, so even if the DNA evidence clearly identified the perpetrator, prosecutions could be barred because time has passed.
“This moment reminds us that our American justice system is always evolving. Our laws are not written in stone,” Scanlon said.
Healey’s office announced that she signed the budget just after 2 p.m. on July 9, with a photo of her, Administration and Finance Secretary Matthew Gorzkowicz and Senate President Karen Spilka. Healey did not include the budget signing on her public schedule, and did not hold a budget-signing press conference, which have been common over the years.
Healey said Friday was “about making sure that our laws reflect a clear difference between right and wrong.”
“When someone abuses a position of trust, there has to be accountability,” Healey said. “When science reveals the facts about an unresolved case, no statute or limitation should get in the way of justice.”
