‘He did something bad’: Girl says about family shelter incident in man’s rape case
Editor's note: This article contains a description of rape and sexual assault.
A 17-year-old girl from Haiti living in Massachusetts took the witness stand on Thursday against the man authorities charged with raping her last year at a state shelter for unhoused families.
"He did something bad to me," the girl said in the trial of the Haitian man, Cory Alvarez, who faces a single count of aggravated rape of a child with a 10-year age difference in Plymouth County Superior Court.
The incident happened on March 13, 2024, at the Comfort Inn in Rockland, a hotel that state officials used at the time for the family shelter program. Officials say Alvarez was 26 at the time.
The girl was 15 at the time, and she spoke in Haitian Creole and through a court-appointed translator on Thursday, the first day of testimony.
She often struggled to remember specifics when asked by a Plymouth County prosecutor, although she at least twice accused Alvarez of rape.
The girl testified that she left her room that day, and when she saw Alvarez in the hotel, he called her to his room on the second floor and she followed him inside. She said they both spoke Haitian Creole and that she had first seen him in the hotel the previous day.
"What he did is the rape," she said. "He had me remove my clothes at the time. He did something bad to me with his body."
Alvarez's attorney, Brian Kelley, objected to the use of the word rape, and Judge Daniel J. O'Shea told jurors that the word is a legal term and that he will give them instructions "about what constitutes that" at a later time. He allowed the girl to use the term throughout her testimony.
When Shanan Buckingham, the prosecutor, asked what exactly Alvarez did with his body, the girl responded, "I don't remember, I forget. I do not remember what."
In another line of questioning, Buckingham asked specifically what part of his body touched her, and the girl said, "The top of his body."
The girl pointed to her chest when asked where she was touched. When asked if she was touched anywhere else, she responded, "No."
"When his body touched your body, what did it feel like?" Buckingham asked.
"I felt that his body was on my body, close to my body," the girl responded.
The questions by Buckingham at times resulted in seemingly conflicting statements, as the girl said at another point that she remained clothed during the interaction.
"Did [your clothes] move at all?" Buckingham asked. The girl replied, "No."
The girl said she left the room "because of what he did to me ... What he did is the rape."
What happened at the hotel?
During opening statements before the girl's testimony, Buckingham told jurors that the girl and Alvarez were in his room for about 8 minutes that day.
The girl arrived in Miami to live with her father in February 2024, and a month later, they moved to Massachusetts to live in the Rockland shelter, according to Buckingham.
Surveillance video inside the hotel captured the girl walking down the hallway into the man's room, Buckingham said, and added that she expected the girl to testify that he pulled her pants and underwear down before raping her.
After the incident, the girl went back into her hotel room. When her father returned, she had a conversation on the phone with a family member, which prompted him to ask what was wrong and what had happened.
She told her father what happened and he then went to Alvarez's room to confront him, but he wasn't in his room.
Rockland police were called and arrived around 7 p.m. They collected the clothes she wore that day and brought her to a hospital. On the way to the ambulance, Buckingham said the girl saw Alvarez on the first floor and pointed him out to the police, but during the girl's testimony, she said she did not see him as she left the hotel.
At the hospital, the girl underwent a sexual assault nurse examination, Buckingham said.
Defense attorney Kelley told jurors that he agreed that the girl and Alvarez lived in the same hotel, but that everything else the prosecution laid out had to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
Kelley said when the girl left Alvarez's room, "There's not a stitch of her clothing out of place," and that she walked past two National Guard members inside the hotel without saying anything. The National Guard provided security at these types of family shelters.
He also noted that there was a five-hour delay between the incident and when police were contacted. He said authorities did not recover any evidence of a sex act in the bedroom, and that the prosecution will rely on DNA evidence collected.
At the hospital, nurses did not find any signs of trauma, redness, bruising, abrasion or any marks, according to Kelley.
"And you will have lots of questions, I suspect of this witness, her father, their motivations potentially," Kelley said.
Kelley filed for a motion for a required finding of not guilty after the girl left the witness stand, claiming that the girl's testimony was insufficient. He argued that she should not have been allowed to use the word "rape," since it is a legal term and the girl was not asked about her understanding of the word.
The nurse who performed the sexual assault examination at the hospital took the witness stand in a hearing without the jurors in the room, and after she explained the tests involved, the judge denied Kelley's motion.
What's next?
The trial will continue on Friday, and Kelley did not say whether he plans to cross-examine the girl.
Attorneys indicated they expect the case to conclude on Wednesday next week.
Alvarez has been held on a $150,000 bail after a judge raised it from $500 last fall in an attempt to keep him in the country to stand trial. Immigration authorities arrested Alvarez after he initially posted a lower bail last year, but they returned him to state custody as part of an agreement with Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz's Office. He's been in custody ever since.
Alvarez entered the country legally and had undergone two background checks, Kelley previously said in court, citing Gov. Maura Healey's office.
It is not clear how long Alvarez had been living at the hotel and Kelley said he spent time in New York City before arriving in Massachusetts.
Alvarez was in the United States as part of the Biden administration's Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans Program, the district attorney's office previously said.
On Aug. 13, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Boston Field Office took Alvarez into custody and he's been held in an ICE unit within the Plymouth County House of Corrections since.
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