Governor Maura Healey’s administration has placed hundreds of homeless families, many of them migrants with young children, in hotels with registered sex offenders, suggesting the state failed to properly vet the sites in its haste to shelter a surge of families arriving from the US southern border, a Boston Globe investigation found.
At least five of the hotels and one dormitory that the state has tapped as homeless shelters also housed or employed sex offenders who have been convicted of crimes against children, including child rape, indecent assault and battery on children, and child pornography.
For the past month, the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities — the agency that oversees the program for sheltering homeless families — has rebuffed the Globe’s requests for information about sex offenders in shelters. The Globe requested the information as part of an in-depth review because the agency’s contracts require hotel providers to screen for sex offenders but not to bar them. After the Globe independently identified sex offenders and asked for comment, a spokesman said late Thursday that the agency is in the process of removing the individuals. None are migrants.
“The safety and wellbeing of the 7,500 families in Emergency Assistance shelter is a priority for our administration,” said Kevin Connor, a spokesman for the housing agency. “We will continue to take all possible steps to ensure the safety of EA residents and carefully review any situation that comes before us to act quickly to protect families.”
Advocates and some residents said they were shocked that the state placed vulnerable children among sex offenders. The Emergency Assistance program is specifically reserved for families with children and pregnant women who would otherwise be homeless.
About half the families now staying in Emergency Assistance hotels and shelters are newly arrived migrants, many of whom don’t speak English and have traveled thousands of miles, fleeing violence and economic despair in their own countries.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” said Carline Desire, executive director of the Dorchester-based Association of Haitian Women, which works with shelter families. She noted that in some shelters, children are not always closely supervised by overwhelmed parents trying to find services.
“They need to get those sex offenders out,” she said.
The hotels where the Globe identified sex offenders include the Comfort Inn in Rockland where a 26-year-old man allegedly raped a 15-year-old girl in March. Both are Haitian migrants who were living in the hotel. At the time, Healey sought to reassure the public that the state was screening migrants for criminal backgrounds.
“Everybody, including him, who enters our shelter locations is vetted,” she told reporters in March.
But the Globe found that a registered sex offender had also been living at the hotel for more than two years before the incident — and had been working at the front desk until January.
After questioning from the Globe, a spokesman for the housing agency said that it checks shelter addresses against the Sex Offender Registry Board every six months so that providers can notify families and that the most recent check was done in March.
In 2019 — long before the surge of migration and homelessness prompted a rapid expansion of the family shelter system — a state audit found the agency was not routinely doing these checks. That audit also faulted the agency for failing to alert families in the shelters when there were sex offenders present.
The worsening migrant crisis has led the state to expand the family shelter system — at a total cost of nearly $1 billion this year — and block out rooms at area hotels, some of which were already partially occupied.
Sex offenders lived or worked at hotels in Rockland, Saugus, Revere, Kingston, and Northborough. A sixth sex offender was registered as of Thursday as living at a former dormitory at Salem State University that is now being used as a shelter. That Level 2 sex offender was convicted in 2012 of rape and abuse of a child and “unnatural acts and lascivious acts with a child under 16.” The Globe identified him to the state on Thursday night. A spokesman said on Friday he has been removed.
The avid hotel in Revere, which was being partially used as a shelter until mid-February, was listed as the workplace of a Level 2 registered sex offender who pleaded guilty in 2010 to receiving child pornography and who had, according to an FBI press release, arranged to meet for sex with a 12-year-old boy. After the Globe asked police about his status on May 10, police reported that he is no longer employed there. Reached by phone, one of the hotel co-owners, Ketan Patel, said he could not comment on employment information.
It is unclear whether state officials had checked hotel addresses against the Sex Offender Registry Board before moving homeless and migrant families there. There is also no indication that families were informed that Level 2 and Level 3 sex offenders — those deemed at moderate or high risk of reoffending — were living and working in these shelters.
The Globe has not identified any problems at these hotels resulting from their presence. Most of the sex offenders appear to have started living at hotels before the recent homeless crisis. The state noted that only two of the sex offenders it confirmed were members of families in the emergency assistance program.
Day-to-day operations at shelters are usually managed by state-hired social service providers such as the Lynn Shelter Association and Centerboard Inc. These nonprofits staff the shelters and help families find services and stable housing. But in the past year, as the shelter system rapidly expanded, the state could not find enough providers. As a result, many families have been living in hotels with limited social services, staffed only by the National Guard, which Healey activated last summer after she declared the migrant crisis an emergency. There are currently 14 hotels overseen by the National Guard.
The Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, which oversees the National Guard in Massachusetts, denied a Globe request for information about sex offenders at shelters, saying it does not maintain such records.
In addition, the state housing agency has not responded to an April 18 public records request from the Globe seeking information on how many sex offenders have been identified by shelter providers.
The state agencies have also declined to provide the addresses of shelters, citing privacy and safety concerns, making it impossible to do a comprehensive search of sex offenders at all shelters. But through media reports, state and local records, and other documents, the Globe was able to identify the locations of 67 shelters and cross-check those addresses against the sex offender registry.
Both state officials and shelter providers have zealously guarded the privacy of shelter families, limiting public scrutiny of a massive taxpayer-funded endeavor.
At the Colonial Traveler Inn, one of several Route 1 roadside motels in Saugus being used as shelters, hotel staff refused to speak to a Globe reporter and said the hotel is private property. On a second visit, the reporter was ordered off the property and served with a “no trespass notice” from the Lynn Shelter Association, the provider running the shelter. Hotel staff declined to comment about the Level 3 sex offender living at the hotel who had been convicted of indecent assault and battery of child under 14 and rape and abuse of a child in Hampden Superior Court in 2005.
The Baymont Hotel in Kingston, where 95 homeless families have been placed, has been home to a man convicted in 2014 of repeatedly and indecently assaulting a girl under 14 years old, by forcing her to touch his penis and touching her vagina, according to court records.
Suzanne Giovanetti, chief executive officer of the Plymouth Area Coalition for the Homeless, the provider at the Kingston shelter, noted that her organization is only responsible for the homeless families on Emergency Assistance. The hotel handles rooms rented out to other residents and staff, she said.
“We have done everything we can as a shelter provider to ensure that all of our families are safe,” Giovanetti said.
But Giovanetti declined to say whether the organization had informed the families there about the sex offender in residence or taken any precautions, such as posting a flier about the sex offender registry.
At the lobby of the Northborough Econo Lodge, there was no flier alerting guests to the presence of a Level 3 sex offender who was convicted in 1990 in Houston of rape of a child with force.
That hotel has no provider, though a coordinator from the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance assists homeless families there. Leah Bradley, the alliance’s chief executive officer, defended the state’s efforts to quickly find rooms to accommodate families who might otherwise have been homeless.
“The state kept kids from dying,” said Bradley. “The state’s choice was to immediately house families so children weren’t sleeping on the street, so that babies who can’t regulate their temperature wouldn’t die. This was a value choice.”
But advocates and residents said the state, providers, and hotels, should have done a better job informing families of the sex offenders at these shelters.
Terrence Flaherty, a Massachusetts resident who lives with his teenage daughters at the Comfort Inn in Rockland, said he never saw posters in the lobby informing families of the sex offender who lived or worked there or information on how to search the registry.
“These posters of sex offenders are hanging out at the police station, they should be here,” Flaherty said. “There are a lot of kids here.”
Deirdre Fernandes can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @fernandesglobe. Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @StephanieEbbert.
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