A Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania jury has convicted Felipe Vázquez on fifteen counts stemming from a sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl, Rich Cholodofsky of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Chris Hoffman of CBS Pittsburgh were among those to report. Specifically, Vázquez was found guilty on ten counts of sexual abuse of children, two counts of unlawful contact with a minor, one count of statutory sexual assault, one count of corruption of a minor, and one count of indecent assault of someone under 16 years old. He will be sentenced in approximately three months and faces a potential decades-long prison term and/or possible deportation to his native Venezuela. Vázquez was acquitted on ten counts of unlawful contact or communication with a minor.
Vázquez was arrested in September 2019 after it was revealed he’d begun a sexual relationship with the underaged girl in 2017. The victim moved to Florida in 2018, where Vázquez allegedly continued to have sex with her. A Florida-based prosecution related to those allegations is still pending, Cholodofsky notes, as is a Missouri child pornography case based on sexually implicit images Vázquez allegedly received from the victim while he was in St. Louis in 2019.
The Pirates placed Vázquez on the restricted list in the immediate aftermath of his arrest. The guaranteed portion of his contract expires at the end of the 2021 season.
