Dec 30, 2007 4:05 pm US/Eastern
Man Charged With Raping Girl Smuggled Into U.S.
BOSTON (AP) ―
A man who allegedly transported illegal immigrants across the country has been charged with raping one of them, a girl he had promised to deliver to her family in the Boston area, police said.
The girl, whose age was not released because she is under 16, fled a Milford, Conn. hotel room after the rape Saturday morning and was found lost and wandering at a gas station, police said Sunday.
Francisco P. Pascual, 25, of the Baltimore suburb of Gwynn Oak, Md., was charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, risk of injury to a minor, unlawful restraint and assault. He was being held on $1 million bond.
Milford officers were called to the gas station Saturday morning by a concerned citizen who said a girl was there and appeared lost, alone and unable to speak English.
During an interview with a Spanish-speaking officer, the girl said she was a native of El Salvador and had been living with her grandmother there until recently.
Her mother and other family members had paid to have the girl smuggled into the United States from Mexico, and she was among a group that arrived in California about four days earlier, police said.
The girl told officers that Pascual dropped off the others at various spots across the U.S., leaving them alone in his vehicle after a stop in New York. He held the girl against her will as they drove into Connecticut, then got a room at a Milford hotel and raped her, police said.
She told officers that she hit him, then grabbed his coat and fled the room. Officers found him later Saturday and arrested him, police said.
Information was not immediately available Sunday about whether Francisco had an attorney and whether the girl would be in state custody, placed with her family in the Boston area or eventually returned to El Salvador.
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