The man accused of raping a child at an immigrant housing facility in Rockland is set to appear soon in Hingham District Court for a dangerousness and detention hearing.
Cory Alvarez, 26, a Haitian national, is charged with aggravated rape of a child with a ten year or more age difference. He is set to appear Friday in Hingham District Court. He is accused of raping a 15-year-old girl who police describe in a report as “disabled,” but did not specify any specific disability.
The hearing scheduled for 11 a.m. began just after that time but was put in a recess until around noon to wait for a French Creole interpreter. Defense attorney Brian Kelley told reporters that Alvarez can only speak French Creole.
Alvarez and the alleged victim both lived at the Comfort Inn at 850 Hingham St. in Rockland, which has been converted to a migrant housing facility operating under both state and federal programs, according to prosecutors.
Rockland Police responded to the hotel a little after 7 p.m. on March 13 after a desk clerk there called to report a rape, according to the police report.
“He raped me,” the girl would tell police from an examination room at South Shore Hospital, where she would have a rape kit done later that day. “I asked him to leave me alone but he didn’t stop.”
Neither the girl nor her father were English speakers, and spoke with police through the aid of a French Creole interpreter who connected by telephone.
While redactions from the police report muddy the details of who is saying what, the basic details are clear: Alvarez went with the girl to his room, room 216, to purportedly help her in some way with her government-provided tablet computer. During the recess, Kelley said that the tablet was issued to the girl’s father and but that she also used it.
While Alvarez and the alleged victim were in the room together, the alleged victim’s father told police, Alvarez asked her if she had a boyfriend before he pushed her to the bed, pulled down her panties and preceded to rape her. The victim said that afterward, her stomach hurt, according to the police report.
Police say that the victim identified Alvarez as her rapist twice. She told police at the hotel that she was raped by a man wearing a red shirt and then pointed down the hallway to Alvarez, who was indeed wearing a red shirt. She then identified him from a photo array presented to her at the hospital later that day.
A woman who identified herself as Alvarez’s girlfriend said that the two of them lived in room 216 together along with her own young child. Alvarez is not that child’s father. She spoke with reporters during the recess through the interpretation of a friend named Bernardo, who said he lives in Brockton.
Defense attorney Kelley said that surveillance footage from the hotel shows that “she’s fully clothed when she goes in the room, she’s fully clothed when she comes out.”
Kelley, who took on the case Friday after Alvarez had already been arraigned, told reporters during the recess that the evidence is not substantial. There is the victim witness and then the hallway video. He said that evidence from the SANE, or Sexual Assault Nurse Evaluation, had not yet been completed or, at least, had not been entered yet.
Kelley said that his client said that not only did he not rape the girl, but that “nothing happened” between them whatsoever.” When asked why the girl would say she was raped, he said he didn’t know.
“You’re asking me to get into the mind of a 15-year-old girl,” he said.
The case has drawn national attention to Massachusetts and federal immigration programs. U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, the Ohio Republican who chairs the powerful House Judiciary Committee announced earlier this week that he was launching an inquiry into the incident and the broader programs that drew the alleged rapist and victim together.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said following the incident that Alvarez had entered the country legally through a federal program and had twice been vetted.
Healey said the state has the “security and systems in place” but “it is unfortunate that from time to time, things will happen anywhere, not just in shelter, but anywhere,” according to a previous Herald story.
The case also made its way into the race for New Hampshire governor. Republican candidate Kelly Ayotte called on her Democratic opponent to reject an endorsement by Healey following Healey’s comments on the issue which Ayotte believed didn’t take the problem seriously enough.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed that it had filed an immigration detainer on Alvarez the day he was arrested. The detainer allows for deportation proceedings to begin should Alvarez be released.
This is a developing story.
