MARLBOROUGH, Mass. — A man has been sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to raping his 14-year-old daughter whom he impregnated at a hotel shelter for migrants and homeless families, the district attorney said Thursday.
Ronald Joseph, 44, who was living at a state-run shelter in Marlborough, was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in state prison after pleading guilty to aggravated rape of a child, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Marlborough Police Chief David Giorgi said in a statement.
Judge Kenneth Salinger handed down his sentence on Friday.
Between September 2023 and May 2024, Joseph and the victim were living at the same hotel in Marlborough when adults at the hotel and the girl’s school became concerned that the 14-year-old girl was pregnant.
The concerns were reported to the state Department of Children and Families, to local police and to Ryan’s office.
The girl was immediately placed into the care of the Department of Children and Families.
Joseph was removed from the shelter while an investigation was ongoing.
In June, Fox News reported that Jon Fetherston, a former director of an immigrant shelter in Marlborough, first blew the whistle about widespread abuse in the shelter system after he discovered Joseph, a Haitian migrant, was living in his shelter and had repeatedly raped and impregnated his young daughter.
Fetherston previously told Fox News Digital that as soon as Joseph heard he was losing custody of his daughter, he “reached across the table and grabbed me and got angry with me and started cursing and yelling and screaming and swinging at me because he realized what was happening.”
Fetherston told Fox News that, instead of Joseph being arrested immediately, he was directed to order Joseph a Lyft ride to another shelter in Worcester County. Joseph was not arrested until eight months in February.
In a letter sent to Attorney General Pam Bondi on June 9, Fetherston said that this was “not an isolated incident” but despite his raising the alarm, “there has been a deliberate wall of silence. No reforms. No accountability. Just more spin, stonewalling, and bureaucratic excuses,” Fox News reported.
“This is a crisis — one that requires federal action now,” Fetherston told the news outlet.
An extensive ultrasound of the victim’s fetus placed the time of conception within the timeframe when the girl and Joseph were living together at the Marlborough shelter, prosecutors said.
After the girl’s baby was born, buccal swabs were taken from the victim, her child, and Joseph, Ryan said.
The samples were sent to a forensic testing laboratory.
On Jan. 24, investigators determined that Joseph was the biological father of the girl, and “also twenty-three trillion times more likely than not, that he was the biological father of the victim’s baby,” Ryan said.
Joseph was held without bail after his Jan. 31 arrest, when he was charged with aggravated rape of child.
He was subsequently indicted on the child rape charge on Feb. 19.
In late June, Gov. Maura Healey announced plans to close most of the state’s emergency family shelters in hotels, with a few remaining hotel shelters slated to be shuttered by July 31.
Healey declared a migrant housing crisis in 2023 when shelter occupancy reached its peak with 100 reported state-run facilities.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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