Lambs to Slaughter

Much like Kevin, one, whom we'll call Andy, was referred to Doherty in 1975 because he was disobeying his parents. Soon the chats with the pastor became a pleasant diversion from Andy's fourth grade lessons, he told Detective Hendel in 2005. Before long, Doherty opened the file cabinet where he kept marijuana, sleeping pills, and Quaaludes, Andy said. Andy was curious to try them and Doherty was glad to share.

Soon, their conversations broached another mysterious adult subject: sex. "He had a really bizarre attitude toward women," Andy said. "He would talk about inserting objects into their vaginas, and pouring lead into their vaginas to determine if they were a witch."

Doherty, said Andy, had a different perspective on boys. "He said the church frowned on homosexuality," Andy recalled, "but that would probably change once they discovered (that) cum tastes good... I just thought it was fascinating. Is that what the world is all about? My parents never told me about this."

Doherty invited Andy on field trips, purportedly to visit Doherty's mother in West Palm Beach. But Andy told police that Doherty's mother was never home. They would "sit around, watch TV, smoke marijuana, take pills, and drink beer," he said. Andy passed out, and when he awoke, he had pain in his rectum. This happened at least three times, he told police.

When he was 14, Andy broke into Doherty's apartment and stole the keys to the car that the priest drove. He didn't see Doherty after that.

Another boy, whom we'll call Chris, said he was 9 when he met Doherty through the Catholic Services Bureau. Like Andy and Kevin, Chris was referred based on behavior problems in school. When, during their sessions, Doherty asked about homosexuality, Chris expressed disgust, saying he'd kill any man who made a move on him. An adult neighbor had already assaulted him.

Chris had formed a drug habit before he became a teenager. Now he bounced between Boys Town in west Miami and juvenile halls. Doherty always seemed to turn up. He encouraged Chris to call him "Gus" too. Chris thought it was cool that this priest had posters of rock bands on his walls. "He was teaching me to drive a car — you know, the things that a boy would want a father figure to do," he told a detective. In his early teens, he visited Doherty at a home in Coconut Grove, he said, and the priest gave him marijuana.

When he was 15 or 16, Chris escaped from a reform school, and Doherty offered him a place to stay. After a night of drinking and smoking pot, Chris passed out. When he woke in the middle of the night, Doherty was molesting him. "I just laid there frozen," he told police. "This person I had trusted with my entire life... violated me, and there is nothing I could do about it."

After Doherty finished, Chris lay awake listening. "I waited until he went to bed. I got up and I left, and I never saw him again." In 1979, Chris was sent to prison for seven years.

Neither Chris nor Andy told anyone about the abuse, they said — not their parents, not even their friends. "It's not a very cool thing to talk about," says Andy, who agreed to be interviewed recently by phone. "When you're a young person, you want to be accepted, to not have people look at you like you're a weirdo." Having recently turned 40, Andy evidently has overcome that fear and is suing the archdiocese.

In 1979, another abuse report surfaced: a boy who says Doherty drugged and molested a 16-year-old friend. Representing the victims at a deposition last year, Herman handed Rev. Monsignor Tomas M. Marin, the chancellor of the archdiocese, a copy of the April 1979 memo that contained the accusation. Herman asked Marin what the proper response to that report should have been.

"Investigate the allegations and see if they were true or not," Marin replied.

Herman pounced. He reminded Marin that the report ought to have been given to the police, not investigated internally by the church. But Marin disagreed: "There is no policy in 1979 that we had to report it," he said.

But there was a law: Florida Statute 415.504. The statute requires persons with knowledge or suspicions of child abuse to report them to the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. "What if I told you there was a law that said you had to report it?" Herman asked. "Would that change your opinion?"

"It would possibly change my opinion," Marin answered.

The report of the 16-year-old, plus another allegation that Doherty molested a 6-year-old, prompted an investigation by the archdiocese. Ultimately, Marin's own review of archdiocese records found no interviews of victims or of Doherty — only a consultation with a psychiatrist and a background check to ascertain if Doherty had ever been arrested in Broward County (he had not). The investigation was closed.