Police Say Janitor Admitted Gropings

The Harvard janitor accused of groping two students told police that he has attacked about 100 women over the last few months, prosecutors said at his bail hearing Jan. 27.

A judge ruled that Geremias Cruz Ramos, 27, would be released on $1,000 cash bail on the conditions that he surrender his passport and stay away from the Harvard campus.

As of last night, Ramos had surrendered his passport but still had not produced the $1,000 cash bail, a source close to the case said.

According to the source, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has a detainer on Ramos—if Ramos posts bail, USCIS can bring him to an immigration court before releasing him on personal recognizance.

Amy S. Otten, a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office, said she would neither confirm nor deny that Ramos’ immigrant status was being investigated.

If Ramos were convicted of the gropings and found to be an illegal immigrant, he would serve his jail sentence first and then go to ICE “for removal,” Otten said.

Although Ramos has only been charged with two counts of indecent assault, a Cambridge Police Department (CPD) officer testified at the hearing last Tuesday that Ramos admitted to groping three to four women a week over the past five or six months.

“He said he felt good, felt accomplished, and [the assaults] made him happy,” Detective John F. Fulkerson said at the hearing.

Ramos is the only suspect who has been arrested in a string of six sexual assaults near Harvard Square this year.

Ramos was arraigned on Jan. 27 for indecent assault and battery in an incident that occurred on Jan. 13 near Claverly Hall, where he is accused of groping an undergraduate.

Ramos, a janitor at Stillman Infirmary in the Holyoke Center, had previously been charged with assaulting a graduate student on Jan. 20.

Cambridge police have said Ramos is not a suspect in the four earlier incidents because the suspect descriptions in those cases do not match Ramos’ profile.

University President Lawrence H. Summers said last Tuesday that Harvard was “gratified by the arrest” and said he had asked the General Counsel’s office to review procedures for background checks on Harvard employees.

Ramos is an employee of Sodhexo, a facilities management company that Harvard subcontracts to perform janitorial services.

Currently, Sodhexo performs background checks on non-management level employees only by request of the subcontractor, according to Merry Touborg, spokesperson for Harvard’s Office of Human Resources.

As a result of the arrest, Touborg said Harvard University Health Services (UHS) will now require Sodhexo to perform background checks on all its UHS workers. She said she was not sure whether this policy would be retroactive to cover current employees.

Officials in Harvard’s central administration are currently considering requiring all contractors to perform criminal checks on employees who work for the University. Harvard already does criminal checks on all in-house employees, Touborg said.

Fulkerson testified last week that the victim in the Jan. 20 incident had been at the intersection of Mt. Auburn and Holyoke Streets on her way to meet friends for dinner.

According to Fulkerson, Ramos “came up from behind her, cutting her off,” and then “grabbed her between the legs, in the crotch area.”

“She said it was a very forcible grab,” Fulkerson said. “She was very upset and he walked away casually.”

After the graduate student used her cell phone to call the police, the suspect began running away.

Police showed the victim a surveillance video of the area to which the suspect had fled, and she recognized Ramos as the suspect “immediately,” according to Fulkerson.

Police identified Ramos’ clothing as a Harvard custodial uniform, and took the victim to Holyoke Center, where she pointed out Ramos from a group of six to eight workers.

The undergraduate who was the victim of the Jan. 13 assault near Claverly was shown photographs of potential suspects and “immediately” picked out a photo of Ramos, Fulkerson said.

Ramos’ lawyer, Carlos J. Dominguez, said during the hearing that Ramos, who lives with his girlfriend and nine-month old daughter in Revere, Mass., is not dangerous and has no prior history of violence.

“There’s not clear evidence that he’s a danger to others,” Dominguez said, pointing out that Ramos is not being accused of using weapons or verbally threatening the women he allegedly assaulted.

Dominguez said that because the police interview with Ramos was conducted in Spanish, Fulkerson may not have understood what Ramos told him about the assaults.

But Fulkerson said there was a Spanish speaking officer acting as a translator in the interview room.

Fulkerson said at the hearing that the Massachusetts drivers license Ramos presented to CPD for identification purposes was fake.

Ramos’ next court appearance will be at a pre-trial hearing on Feb. 23.

If found guilty, he could receive a maximum of five years in jail for each count of indecent assault.

—Elisabeth S. Theodore contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Hera A. Abbasi can be reached abbasi@fas.harvard.edu.