‘I felt I was surrounded by monsters.’ Trial begins for Catholic priest accused of rape

Father Jean Claude Philippe, she said, was family.

He officiated her wedding at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Homestead, where she taught children at Sunday school. The priest served as the godfather for her — and her daughter. Philippe accompanied her and church members on vacations, and often brought her family gifts from his own trips abroad.

But on Oct. 30, 2018, she told jurors on Tuesday, Philippe invited the woman to his home on the church grounds to give her gifts from a recent trip. In the kitchen, he gave her a mysterious tea drink in a bottle and she passed out. She woke up two hours later, completely naked on his bed. “He was naked, except for some white underwear,” she recalled. “He wanted to embrace me and say everything was okay, that nothing was happening.”

But what happened, Miami-Dade prosecutors told jurors, was that the priest had raped the woman — an attack Philippe partially confessed to when confronted by detectives five months later.

“She’s going to tell you as a devout Catholic, this shattered her foundation of trust,” Assistant State Attorney Khalil Quinan told jurors in opening statements. “She is going to tell you she stopped going to church. She stopped going to mass.”

Jurors heard her emotional testimony Tuesday on the first day of trial for Philippe, the former vicar at Sacred Heart. The priest’s trial started more than two years after his arrest — and marked one of Miami-Dade’s first major trials in a high-profile case after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered courthouses across South Florida.

The 66-year-old Phillippe is charged with sexual battery of a helpless victim. His trial is expected to last all week in front of Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Carmen Cabarga. The case proved a scandal for the Archdiocese of Miami, which suspended Philippe after his arrest.

Philippe is expected to testify in his own defense.

His defense lawyer, Thomas Risavy, sought to cast doubt on the woman’s story — suggesting she wanted “some benefit” from the Archdiocese because she hired a civil attorney. And, Risavy said, Philippe’s admissions to police were not what they seemed.

“They call it a confession,” Risavy said during his opening statement. “If it’s a confession, it’s coerced.”

Tearful testimony

The woman, in her mid-40s, took the stand Tuesday to deliver gut-wrenching testimony.

She could barely bring herself to look at Philippe, who was dressed not in a cassock and collar, but in a gray suit and tie. Her finger trembled as she pointed him out to the jury. At one point, the court took a brief break after she began sobbing while recalling the night of the rape.

“Did you consider him like a father to you,” Quinan asked her.

She paused, choked up. “Yes,” she said.

The night of the incident, after she woke up, she testified that she smelled bodily fluids, but the priest claimed he’d only massaged her. In the days afterward, she tried to confront Philippe but he avoided her. When she was finally able to talk to him, he again insisted nothing happened.

Why didn’t she go to the police, the prosecutor asked

“I didn’t know what he had done to me,” she sobbed. “I have a son who had just graduated as a police officer. I thought I might disgrace or ruin my son’s life.”

But she did reveal the incident to a senior Sacred Heart clergyman, Silverio Rueda, she testified. He did not call police, but rather moved his fingers across his lips, suggesting she keep quiet. His advice, she said, left her devastated.

“I felt I was surrounded by monsters, by bad people. I felt betrayed,” she said.

(In 2019, Rueda told the Herald the woman was casting “absolute lies.”)

Keeping Quiet

She kept quiet until February 2019, when she revealed her story to another priest during confession at a spiritual retreat. That outraged priest urged her to report the suspected rape. Within weeks, Miami-Dade police detectives began an investigation — at one point, secretly recording a phone conversation between the woman and the priest.

In that conversation, Philippe kept saying nothing happened, but then acknowledged he masturbated — adding he “never penetrated” her,” said Quinan, who is trying the case with Chief Assistant State Attorney Kathleen Hoague.

Later, when detectives detained Philippe, he continued to deny anything happened, until they asked for his DNA. Then, Quinan told jurors, he began to try to explain away why DNA might be found — claiming she was to blame for grabbing him during the massage, a and forcing him to “insert” himself into her.

Risavy, the defense lawyer, downplayed the so-called confession, saying a detective “started putting words in his mouth.” He pointed out because of the delay in reporting the incident, investigators never found any DNA evidence.

“It’s clear what she said happened didn’t happen,” he said.