A migrant father who was accused of raping and impregnating his teenage daughter in a state-run shelter has pleaded guilty to aggravated rape of a child, Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan said Thursday.
The 44-year-old, whom the Globe is not naming to protect the identity of his 14-year-old daughter, was arrested Jan. 31 and charged with aggravated rape of a child and held without bail, Ryan said in a statement. He was indicted Feb. 19.
The man, who is Haitian, pleaded guilty last Friday and Judge Kenneth Salinger sentenced him to serve 12 to 15 years in prison, prosecutors said.
Between September 2023 and May 2024, the man was living in the Marlborough Holiday Inn with his daughter, prosecutors said.
During this time, adults at both the hotel and the teenager’s school “became concerned that the 14-year-old victim was pregnant,” prosecutors said.
The agency that ran the shelter, Eliot Community Human Services, discovered that the teenager was pregnant and interviewed her, according to a report the agency compiled for the state.
The girl reported that her father had sex with her multiple times both on the journey to the United States and after they arrived, according to the report, which was submitted to the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities that oversees the family shelter system.
The concerns were reported to the state Department of Children and Families, local police, and the district attorney’s office, prosecutors said.
The teenager was “immediately placed into the care of the Department of Children and Families and the defendant was removed from the shelter while the investigation was ongoing,” prosecutors said.
When the father was asked to leave the shelter, he became upset and threatening, the report said. He was sent to a nearby adult-only shelter.
The Globe does not name victims of sexual assault. In this case, the Globe is not identifying the father because doing so could also identify the girl.
During the investigation, an “extensive ultrasound” was conducted that placed the time of conception of the child in the time frame when the daughter and the man were living together in Marlborough, prosecutors said.
After the baby was born, cheek swabs were taken from the girl, her child, and the man, and the samples were sent to a forensic testing laboratory, prosecutors said.
In January, “it was determined that not only was the defendant the biological father of the victim, it was also twenty-three trillion times more likely than not that he was the biological father of the victim’s baby,” prosecutors said.
The man entered the United States in May 2023 without valid paperwork but was granted entry into the country and given a date to appear before an immigration judge, according to a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The date of the immigration court appearance did not happen before the man’s arrest, the spokesperson said. Officials have lodged an immigration detainer against the man, the spokesperson said.
Information from previous Globe reports was used in this article.
Ava Berger can be reached at ava.berger@globe.com. Follow her @Ava_Berger_.