High school years are often remembered as some of the most enjoyable times in life. During this period, you spend your days with friends, have fewer responsibilities, and enjoy a schedule that ends earlier than a typical workday.
While many people occasionally long for the chance to revisit their teenage years, it’s not something physics permits.
However, one woman in her thirties attempted to do just that by pretending to be a teenager and attending high school for an entire year.
Shelby Hewitt, from Canton, Massachusetts, managed to deceive everyone for a full year by posing as a student in three different high schools under false identities.
At 31 years old, Hewitt used fake IDs and documents to enroll at Jeremiah E Burke High School, Brighton High School, and English High School. She accomplished this by ‘utilizing the student transfer process and enrolling under multiple pseudonyms’ throughout Boston over the span of a year.
Her academic journey began shortly after she purchased a condo in Worcester, a city located about 40 miles east of Boston, for $377,000. It is believed she paid for this property in cash, reportedly telling friends she received over $1 million from a family inheritance.
At Jeremiah E Burke High School in Dorchester, she assumed the identity of ‘Daniella’, claiming to be a sex-trafficked foster child who was illiterate, despite being highly educated and working as a social worker.
Pretending to be as young as 13, she even got braces and joined a school basketball team. Meanwhile, she maintained her adult friendships and even went on vacation to Colorado with them.
In an interview with The Boston Globe, Katie, a childhood friend of Hewitt who withheld her last name, recounted how her and her friends wanted to extend their vacation, but Hewitt insisted she needed to return for work.
“I asked if we could shift the trip or stay another day but she said she absolutely couldn’t because of work and she didn’t have any PTO (paid time off),” Katie shared.
Another friend named Andria, who also withheld her last name, explained that after Hewitt’s arrest, she received a call from her former friend, who apologized and explained that a psychic had influenced her decision to relive her youth.
At Andria’s wedding in 2022, Hewitt served as maid of honor, and three years earlier, the two had visited a psychic to help Hewitt cope with her mother’s death.
Hewitt later consulted the medium alone and claimed the psychic advised revisiting her childhood to heal past traumas.
According to her lawyer, Timothy Flaherty, Hewitt suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as ‘multiple personality disorder’.
Hewitt has denied all charges, which include three counts of forgery, two of forgery at common law, one of uttering (putting forged money into circulation), one of identity fraud, larceny over $1,200 (theft of personal property), and making false claims to her employer.
The indictment claims her fraudulent actions took place between December 2021 and February 2023, alleging that while she was employed as a social worker at the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, she orchestrated the scheme to convince the Boston Public School system she was a child as young as 13.
She is scheduled to stand trial at the end of the year.