Man accused of rape in migrant shelter freed on bail

Cory Alvarez allegedly raped a 15-rear-old girl in a hotel being used to shelter migrants in March.

A Haitian national who allegedly raped a 15-year-old girl at a migrant shelter in Rockland was released on bail last week, according to court documents.

Cory Alvarez, 26, was arrested in March and ordered held without bail pending a dangerousness hearing. Prosecutors asked a judge to keep Alvarez detained pending trial or set bail at $25,000 if the first request was not met.

The judge instead set a $500 cash bail with conditions that Alvarez wear a GPS monitoring device, remain confined at a Brockton address, not contact the alleged victim, surrender his passport and other travel documents, and check in twice a month with a probation officer, according to court documents. Alvarez was released on those conditions last week.

He has pleaded not guilty and is due back in court on Aug. 13.

Alvarez was accused of raping the girl at the Comfort Inn at 850 Hingham St., one of many hotels around Massachusetts being used to house migrants as the state’s emergency shelter system remains strained by high housing costs and an influx of new arrivals. The girl is also a Haitian migrant, officials have said.

At a hearing in March, Sgt. Det. Gregory Pigeon of the Rockland Police Department testified about the police response to the incident. A hotel employee called 911 on March 13 to report the alleged assault. The girl told officers through a interpreter that she was brought to Alvarez’s room and raped there. She pointed Alvarez out to the officers, Pigeon said, according to The Boston Globe.

Alvarez voluntarily agreed to be questioned by police, Pigeon said at the time. He told officers that he had been trying to fix her iPad, and he let her use his phone to call her mother. Alvarez denied any sexual contact with the girl. An excerpt from a Department of Children and Families report read during the hearing in March said that a sexual assault examiner “did not see physical injuries” to the girl, per the Globe.

Alvarez was granted bail “due to the inconsistencies in the evidence and the alleged victim’s version of events, lack of physical evidence, and [because] the surveillance did not support the claim,” his lawyer, Brian Kelley, told the paper.

After Alvarez was arrested, Gov. Maura Healey said that he entered the U.S. through a federal program. Alvarez passed two background checks and did not have any past offenses listed on a sex offender registry, she said.

Federal immigration officers filed a detainer against Alvarez with the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office in March. Plymouth Superior Court officials refused to honor that detainer and released Alvarez on bail, the Globe and the Boston Herald both reported. Trial Court policy, however, dictates that anyone who would otherwise be entitled to go free cannot be held “solely on a civil immigration detainer or civil immigration warrant.”