At 15 years old, Melissa Fares enrolled at Miss Hall’s School, a private boarding school in the hills of western Massachusetts. Not long after, she said, a charismatic, respected teacher and coach at the school began to pay her special attention, sharing secrets and private study sessions.

After she turned 16, the legal age of consent in Massachusetts, the teacher, Matthew Rutledge, capitalized on the intimacy he had cultivated, Fares said. In most states, what happened next — a teacher having sex with a 16-year-old student — would qualify as sexual abuse, or even rape.

But not in Massachusetts, where state law says children as young as 16 are old enough to consent to sexual activity with adults, even if those adults are their teachers.

A law firm hired by the all-girls school substanti

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