STATE HOUSE — More Massachusetts residents committed suicide in 2013 than died as a result of car crashes and homicides combined, and yet the state has one of the lowest suicide rates in the country, according to the latest data from the Department of Public Health.
The 585 suicides in Massachusetts during 2013 was a decrease from the previous year, but was still higher than in almost every year since at least 2003. The total also put the state at a rate of 8.7 suicides for every 100,000 people, a rate that has increased by an average of 3.6 percent each year since the state began using a sophisticated system to collect suicide data in 2003, DPH said in a report ordered by legislators and filed last week.
BOSTON (AP) — Two former students of a prestigious Rhode Island boarding school spoke haltingly or cried Tuesday as they detailed being sexually abused as teenagers by an ex-athletic trainer. A third former student said he was raped with a broomstick by another pupil and described how his assault was so well-known on campus that there was a joking reference to it in the yearbook.
The three former students, who spoke at a Boston news conference, are among dozens who allege they were sexually abused at St. George's School in Middletown, where tuition costs $56,000 a year. Lawyers who represent them said they have heard from 40 people who have reported being molested or raped by former school staffers and students, most during the 1970s and 1980s but some as recently as 2004.
