Our System Continues to Break Down - Background Check Failures - Predators Seek Victims
The story of Xavier Cruzz a thirty-four-year-old man who sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in a group home in Springfield, MA.
When background checks fail. There is a growing number of stories about people being allowed to work with the elderly, children, and the disabled when they have been priorly found guilty of crimes against them. How could this be happening? Our courts are supposed to be set up to help the innocent, but the system continues to fail. Massachusetts continues to faulter. There are countless open cases of abuse right now connected with failure in background checks.
We need to advocate for change.
Here is the story of Xavier Cruz
Xavier Cruz’s guilty plea for the rape and indecent assault and battery of a 14-year-old resident at the now-shuttered Greylock group home in Springfield has revealed what a victim’s rights attorney describes as a catastrophic failure of the Massachusetts state background check system.
25 Investigates: Mass. let a known criminal care for troubled teens, he raped one
While the 34-year-old was recently sentenced to 13 to 15 years at Souza-Baranowski State Prison, an investigation into his employment history reveals that Cruz was licensed to work with vulnerable children despite a specific court order that should have disqualified him from the position.
25 Investigates reviewed Cruz’s criminal history. It began nearly two decades ago with charges ranging from assault and battery to larceny, but it was his actions in 2020 that should have sounded alarms with state regulators.
While employed as a home health care worker, Cruz stole an engagement ring and wedding band from a 91-year-old woman on oxygen and her daughter. A Superior Court judge placed him on probation and ordered that he refrain from any employment involving elders or people with disabilities.
Despite the order, the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) approved Cruz to work as an overnight supervisor at Greylock, a Springfield facility affiliated with the Department of Children and Families.
It was in this capacity that prosecutors say he groomed and assaulted a teenager with mental health struggles while she was in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF).
“He enjoyed the attention that he received from these girls. He sort of bragged in his interviews that he was told that some of the girls had a crush on him,” Hampden County Assistant District Attorney Amy Wilson said during Cruz’s sentencing hearing.
Erica Brody, a Boston-based attorney representing the victim’s family, characterized the situation as a failure at every level, noting the inherent shock of a person under court order being granted access to a facility for children with disabilities.
“You have a person who was on Superior Court probation. He was ordered not to work with disabled people and he was hired to work in a group home with disabled children,” Brody told Investigative Reporter Ted Daniel.
25 Investigates uncovers hundreds of people with criminal records to provide childcare in Mass.
This case is not an isolated incident within the EEC’s licensing history. 25 Investigates previously reported that roughly 500 home daycare providers in Greater Boston and in areas north of the city have been approved for licenses since 2020 despite having open or closed criminal cases.
