MIAMI — Prosecutors are asking that a Homestead, Florida, priest convicted of raping a parishioner on church grounds be sentenced to the max: 15 years in prison.
Father Jean Claude Philippe, 66, was convicted at trial of raping a woman in the rectory of Homestead’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Philippe, who had been jailed since his October conviction, faces between 7.8 and 15 years in prison under Florida’s sentencing guidelines.
He had been scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday afternoon. But the hearing was re-scheduled to Feb. 17 after jailers told the judge that Philippe’s cell block was quarantined because of COVID-19, and he’d been hospitalized for unspecified reasons.
