Plymouth District Attorney Timothy J. Cruz said Gardner faced “heinous allegations’’ in the first arrest and that prosecutors were disappointed that Plymouth District Court Judge Thomas F. Brownell set bail at $10,000 instead of the $200,000 they originally sought.

After Gardner’s indictment, the first rape case was transferred to Superior Court, where prosecutors again requested high bail – $150,000. But Judge Joseph M. Walker III kept bail at $10,000, and Gardner remained free.

Depending on the circumstances, Cruz said, judges typically impose a range of bail amounts in sexual assault cases. In some instances, he said, judges have released rape suspects on their own recognizance.

Judges are typically barred from speaking about pending cases.

Jack M. Atwood, a Plymouth lawyer whom McColloch works for and who represented Gardner on the first rape charges, did not return phone calls.

John G. Swomley, a Boston defense lawyer who has represented many individuals accused of sex offenses, said the $10,000 bail struck him as low.

“If the allegations are credible and there doesn’t appear to be something that wouldn’t be suggestive of fabrication, it would normally be a much higher bail,’’ said Swomley, who is not involved in Gardner’s cases.

Still, he said, the judges might have considered that Gardner had never been accused of a sex offense before August, according to public records.

In the first case, Gardner allegedly broke into a Kingston home through a bathroom window, according to the mother of the alleged victim, whose name the Globe is withholding because it would indirectly identify her daughter, the victim of a sexual assault. The Globe does not identify sexual assault victims.

Investigators gathered fingerprints and other forensic evidence that tied Gardner to the crime, she said.

According to a Kingston police report filed in court, the first alleged victim was staying at a woman relative’s house with another female relative, age 10, on Aug. 22. Between 4 and 6 a.m., the woman heard the 6-year-old crying and the 10-year-old girl yelling but dismissed it as a routine disturbance.

But around 6 a.m., the woman got up and was told by the 6-year-old that “a man was in her room . . . and was hurting her,’’ said the police report. A container of baby powder was on the floor and the powder was on the bed.

The woman discovered Gardner – to whom she was related by a former spouse – just steps away from the girls’ bedroom. Gardner said he was there to pick up garbage and take it to the dump, but the woman told police Gardner did not come through the front door and was not supposed to be in her home.

Gardner, who had baby powder on him, was ordered to leave but returned later with his father, David Gardner, according to the police report. Joseph Gardner “was very upset’’ and tearfully denied harming the 6-year-old girl, according to the report.

The woman took the girl to Jordan Hospital in Plymouth and was told by medical staff that the child would have to be taken to Boston to be interviewed by a specially trained medical team, said the report.

But while waiting at the hospital, the girl appeared to recant. A nurse overheard her say “she made it all up’’; outside the hospital, though, the girl told her relative she denied being attacked “because she just wanted to go home,’’ according to the report.

Meanwhile, the 10-year-old gave police a graphic account of the assault, the report said.

The events leading up to the second alleged rape began when Gardner started dating a woman with whom he had gone to high school, prosecutors said. The woman brought her two children, a 3-year-old girl and an 8-year-old boy, to spend the night at Gardner’s home on Friday, prosecutors said.

Gardner lives on Summer Street with his 4-year-old son. The woman had slept there without her children the night before, court records show.

The woman told investigators that she heard her 3-year-old crying in the middle of the night but dismissed it because the girl often got upset while sleeping.

The next morning the woman noticed that her daughter was no longer wearing a pull-up diaper and she asked her about it. The girl then allegedly told her mother that Gardner sexually assaulted her and told the girl he would kill her father if she told anyone, according to police. The woman took her daughter to Jordan Hospital, which notified police.

When police arrested Gardner at home on Sunday morning, he said the woman’s allegations were untrue. “She accused me of this yesterday and wanted money so I gave it to her,’’ Gardner told police, according to court records. “She must have heard about my other case.’’

Andrew Ryan of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

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