Five years ago this January, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced they would be “stepping back” from royal duties, a decision that would lead to
Five years ago this January, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced they would be “stepping back” from royal duties, a decision that would lead to an even sharper break with their English family than the couple perhaps had anticipated, and ended with their relocation to California. Once there, they sat down with Oprah, as celebrities do, and told a lot, if not all. Then they set about charting a path to Stateside financial and cultural power. But manifest destiny can be harder to pull off than it looks. Anna Peele, whose last story in the magazine probed the off-screen subculture of the Real Housewives, examines the Sussexes’ life as Americans, from their media deals and charitable causes—including, most recently, pitching in on wildfire-relief efforts—to the state of their union. In a contemporary world where tech bros, finance bros, and former reality TV stars hold ultimate sway, how do an actual duke and duchess, whose ties to royalty are at once their biggest draw and their bête noire, stay relevant? Can it be accomplished with podcasts and jam?
I read the first draft of Evgenia Peretz’s story about an alleged sexual predator at Miss Hall’s School with a diseased feeling borne of familiarity. The charismatic teacher targeting schoolgirls by taking advantage of their youthful insecurities…we have seen this play before. But what stood out about this case was the longevity of the alleged abuse, perpetrated by the same man over decades, and the astonishing failure on the part of faculty and administration members not only to heed what survivors say were repeated warnings about their star history teacher, but to step in and protect the girls entrusted to their care. Ironically, the solidarity now formed among Matt Rutledge’s accusers feels like a twisted version of precisely the community a girls boarding school is supposed to encourage.
This article came about when, after one of them had filed a complaint with the school to little avail, Melissa Fares and Hilary Simon reached out to Vanity Fair and got in touch with Evgenia, a trusted reporter with a track record of holding individuals and institutions accountable for such betrayals. (Evgenia’s many profiles and investigative pieces for Vanity Fair since she began contributing to the magazine in 1999 demonstrate both her gift for empathy and her ability to unravel deceit; you can stream Anatomy of Lies, the docuseries based on another of her VF stories about shattered vulnerability, which she codirected, on Peacock.) Though it is painful to absorb what the students of Miss Hall’s and their families endured and still wrestle with, it is an act of humanity to acknowledge their experiences and their quest for resolution. Melissa says, “The shame I feel is also his shame. And that’s what predators, I think, do. They take their shame, they put it on you, and you have to carry it.” Nothing can reverse what happened to these women. But we hope that stories like Evgenia’s can play a role in putting the shame back where it belongs.
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