Griswold — A Massachusetts man was charged with sexual assault Friday when he turned himself in to state police in Montville after learning of a warrant for his arrest, police said.

Tyler E. Hellyar, 20, of Brimfield, Mass., was charged Friday with second-degree sexual assault. He was held on a $50,000 bond, which he posted, and was arraigned Friday in New London Superior Court. His next court date is Dec. 10.

Police launched the investigation after the victim’s parents called police on Feb. 10 reporting that they had found a man visiting their 14-year-old daughter in their home in the middle of the night.

The father of the victim, in his affidavit to police, said he was awakened about 3 a.m. to his daughter calling for him saying that her mother needed him.

When he got up and went downstairs where his daughter and wife were, they told him a man was in the house. The father then said he discovered Hellyar standing in the basement bathroom, without a shirt, socks or shoes and wearing “greyish” pants.

After telling Hellyar to sit on the basement couch and while the mother called police, the father asked Hellyar what he was doing in the house and how he got in, and repeatedly asked how old he was and how old Hellyar thought his daughter was.

Hellyar, admitting that he came to see the girl and that he got into the house by climbing through a basement window, first told the victim’s father he was 18, when he was actually 19 years old at the time, and that he believed the girl was 18.

Hellyar also denied having sex with the girl.

Hellyar later admitted that he did have sex with the girl after police arrived and after the girl admitted to police that she had sex with Hellyar, according to the affidavit.

In Hellyar’s affidavit to police, Hellyar said he met the 14-year-old girl on the Tinder dating app, where the two exchanged Snapchat information and proceeded to converse on Snapchat. Hellyar said that after talking about and making plans with the girl to “hang out,” the two met on the morning of Jan. 1, 2019, when both the victim’s parents were not home. According to the affidavit, the father was on a hunting trip while the mother was at work.

Hellyar said the two ate lunch, watched a movie and cuddled on the basement living room couch before then having sex.

Hellyar said the two later hung out again a couple days later, this time not having sex, before he again saw the girl for a third time on Feb. 10. He said until that point, the two texted each other on Snapchat at least two to three times a day.

On Feb. 10, Hellyar said he arrived at the victim’s house about 1 a.m., where he climbed through a basement window after parking his truck down the road. The two again watched a movie before having sex on the basement couch, he said.

Hellyar said he was then caught by the victim’s mother when she came downstairs to put wood on the stove and had noticed a man’s shoes in the house. While hiding himself in the bathroom, the victim admitted to her curious mother that “a boy was in the house.”

Hellyar told police that he did not know the victim was younger than 18 and that she had told him that her 19th birthday would be later this year. According to the affidavit, Hellyar had saved screenshots of the victim’s Tinder profile on his phone indicating that she was 18.

The victim told police in a later interview that she asked Hellyar how old he was and that he had responded he was 19, but Hellyar never asked the victim her age.