Bond reduced for Barrington visitor charged with rape

A Cook County judge reduced bail from $300,000 to $100,000 for a 20-year-old Barrington man charged with sexually assaulting a teenage girl during a July power outage.

Santiago Farias-Alvarez must post 10 percent, or $10,000, to be released from custody.

Prosecutors say Farias-Alvarez attacked the 16-year-old girl the evening of July 11, following storms that cut power to both their residences. They say he invited the girl into his darkened house, pushed her into a room and raped her.

Defense attorney Dwight C. Adams insisted that his client is innocent and that the sex was consensual, though the teenager is under the legal age of consent.

“This is the most bogus case since Dominique Strauss-Kahn,” said Adams, referring to the former head of the International Monetary Fund, charged in May with trying to rape a New York City hotel maid whose credibility now has been challenged.

About 10 members of Farias-Alvarez’s extended family listened as Adams insisted that the teen pursued his client, who is in the United States on a four-month visa from his native Mexico. He is staying with his grandfather and other family members at the grandfather’s Barrington home, Adams said, adding that Farias-Alvarez’s relatives are U.S. citizens.

In requesting a reduction in bail, Adams pointed out his client’s lack of criminal background and his family ties.

“My client is a visitor in this country. He was pursued by this woman,” Adams said. He said the teen did not inform authorities of the assault until nine days after it allegedly took place.

“To have him housed in Division I (of the Cook County jail) with the worst of the worst is a gross injustice,” Adams said.

Judge Kay Hanlon agreed to reduce the bond but declined to set it lower than $100,000, suggesting that the seriousness of the felony charges Farias-Alvarez faces could make him a flight risk.

He next appears in court on Aug. 18.