Give carte blanche to perpetrators of violence.

“Massachusetts law sets the age of consent at 16,” said District Attorney Timothy Shugrue in a press release. “While the alleged conduct is deeply disturbing, it is not illegal.”

Also deeply disturbing: Massachusetts law states that a 16-year-old can consent to sex with a person more than twice her age and with great power. More enlightened states take power imbalances into account: In Connecticut, for example, the age of consent is higher if sex is with someone in a position of power. In some states, it is a crime for a teacher to have sex with a student – regardless of the student’s age.

But here despite a long-term battle to change the rape law — a change Shugrue supports — the law still says Fares and Rutledge’s other alleged victims consented to sex because he was smart enough to wait until they were 16.

Fares said Berkshire County “has just given carte blanche to teachers, coaches, counselors and perpetrators of rape of students who are 16 years of age or older.”

Two things went terribly wrong here.

First of all, the law is broken and needs to be changed eventually. In such situations, the age of consent should at least be raised.

Second, the police and district attorney appear to be defining consent too loosely, relying too heavily on age. Why isn’t this a case of rape, just like that?

Prices could have been £16 but she clearly did not consent to what Rutledge allegedly did to her. According to her, the teacher – treated as an invincible god during the thirty years she spent at the preparatory school in Pittsfield – started raising her when she was 15 sophomore, paid special and increasingly sexual attention to her and threatened to harm himself if she told anyone. He had all the power. He could control Fares’ grades, her privileges, and her college prospects.

How could she rightfully consent when Rutledge told her to come into his classroom one day in 2008 and perform oral sex on her under his desk? Or the following year, when she said he told her to come to his classroom early one day, he took her to a closet where there was a yoga mat on the floor, undressed her, and had intercourse with her — and continued to do so throughout his life. her senior year and beyond?

“I didn’t know he was going to have sex with me,” Fares said. “I saw there was a yoga mat on the floor, he closed the door behind me, lowered the blind and locked the door. There was no consent at any point.”

Rutledge’s coming forward and eventual rape charge was extremely painful for Fares: She remembers a two-hour Zoom call with police in the spring, shortly after she and another alleged victim, Hilary Simon, went public. Fares clenched her fists the entire time, reminding herself to breathe. It has taken her years to get to this point, and since the allegations were made, she has had to put her life and career on hold to focus on her recovery.

She worries that the lack of action on her case sends a dangerous message to others trying to decide whether to report abusers. “It must fill them with a lot of doubt and confusion: ‘Maybe it wasn’t something bad’ and ‘Maybe it was my fault’ because children blame themselves,” she said.

A spokesman for Shugrue said Pittsfield police conducted an investigation and notified him that Rutledge’s conduct was not contrary to applicable law, a decision he agreed with. There is still hope that charges will be brought in Connecticut, where the law better protects students from being preyed upon by trusted adults and where Rutledge allegedly had sex with his student at her family’s boarding house – which he called “Rutledge’s cottage”.

Meanwhile, Fares and the others must face vexing injustice.

“I wonder how many more rape reports will be needed before people stop protecting perpetrators and start protecting children,” she said.

Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham can be reached at [email protected].