Indecent Assault & Battery on Disabled or Person 60 Years or Older

Massachusetts uses two separate statutes to address indecent assault and battery against vulnerable adults. This page covers the broader one, the second paragraph of M.G.L. c. 265, §13H, which applies to elders and people with disabilities as defined under §13K.

Who Qualifies as an Elder or Person With a Disability

An elder is anyone 60 or older. The statute doesn’t require proof of frailty or cognitive decline, just age.

A person with a disability, under §13K, is someone with a permanent or long-term physical or mental impairment that limits their ability to care for or protect themselves. A medical diagnosis alone isn’t enough. The impairment has to restrict that person’s ability to look after their own care.

What the Commonwealth Has to Prove

Five elements make up this charge:

• The complainant was touched intentionally
• The touching was without legal justification
• The touching was indecent
• The complainant didn’t consent
• The complainant met the statutory definition of an elder or a person with a disability

Notably, §13H doesn’t expressly require proof that you knew the complainant had a disability. That’s a real difference from the intellectual disability statute discussed below.

Being 60 or older, or having a disability, doesn’t automatically strip someone of the capacity to consent. The Commonwealth still must prove nonconsent, whether through evidence of an actual refusal or evidence that the complainant lacked the capacity to agree at all. That evidence can touch on cognition, communication, intoxication, medical conditions, and the nature of any relationship between you and the complainant.

Defense questions in these cases often come down to whether the complainant met the §13K definition, whether the touching was intentional, and whether the interaction could reasonably be understood as consensual given everything the accused knew at the time.

Penalties You’re Facing

A first offense carries up to 10 years in state prison or up to 2½ years in a house of correction. A second or later offense raises the maximum to 20 years in state prison. The law prohibits placing the case on file or continuing it without a finding.

Registration follows the standard 20-year period unless a lifetime condition applies, and probation requires GPS monitoring for the full term. Prosecutors generally have six years to bring this particular charge.

A Separate, Harsher Statute for Intellectual Disability

If the complainant has an intellectual disability specifically, and you knew about it, the charge falls under a different law, §13F. The Supreme Judicial Court held in Commonwealth v. St. Louis that intellectual disability has its own accepted legal meaning, distinct from the broader disability definition in §13K.

A §13F conviction carries a first offense range of five to ten years in state prison, and it falls under the lifetime registration category rather than the standard 20-year period.

Riccio Law is ready to go through the specifics of your situation with you. Get in touch with us to talk about what comes next.

Our office number is (617) 404-8878.