Lambs to Slaughter

If you've been abused by a priest in South Florida, Jeffrey Herman is the guy you call. Herman grew up in a Jewish family in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland. He's in his 40s, has a weightlifter's shoulders and an eager, energetic demeanor. On days he's not in court, he ditches the suit for jeans and vintage T-shirts. He relishes media coverage, which for him is a good way to attract new clients.

So far, Herman has settled five civil cases involving the Rev. Neil Doherty and has six more pending. He has also sued the archdiocese based on reports of abuse by 15 other priests.

The Catholic Church has become a jackpot for Herman, who reasons that it's the church's own fault. "From my perspective, secrecy is a hallmark of the church," he says. "You have this imbalance of power where priests are the parish's connection to God. They have a mandate to keep secrets, to protect the church from scandal. And that was their priority — not protecting children."

In the course of bringing his lawsuits, Herman has learned much about the psychological effects of sexual abuse, how it shames victims into feeling as though they're controlled by forces stronger than themselves. Since the criminal courts' statute of limitations has lapsed for victims who were abused in the '70s and '80s, the civil courts are the only place they can seek justice.

"By coming forward and filing a civil lawsuit, they're taking power back in their lives," says Herman. "Victims have told me this is part of the healing process. By holding the church accountable, they realize, 'This is not my fault.'"

In sexual abuse cases involving priests, the Catholic Church has traditionally used a Canon Law standard to judge guilt or innocence called "moral certainty." It's similar to a criminal jury's instruction to convict only when evidence suggests "guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." Handled internally by the church, abuse complaints boil down to a priest's word against a child's. In Doherty's case, those children were almost always from checkered backgrounds. That appears to have made it difficult for the church to establish moral certainty of Doherty's guilt.

Herman argues that even if the individual kids who claimed Doherty abused them lacked credibility, the sheer volume of reports, combined with their similarity — drugged, then raped — established a pattern that made Doherty's guilt inescapable. "If you're not going to remove a priest until you have moral certainty, you're going to expose kids to a grave risk," says Herman. "In my opinion, the only thing certain about Doherty is that he was going to abuse more kids."

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As he shuffles into a conference room in a jail jumpsuit, Jorge Soler no longer looks like the boy he was when he met Doherty. He doesn't even look like the young man in the mug shot, his goatee finely trimmed, from when he was booked at the Turner-Guilford-Knight Correctional Center in Miami. Now, aged 32, his thick beard covers his whole face.

Soler grew up in Little Haiti before the area's cultural renaissance and the emerging Design District. In the early 1980s, drugs and crime made the sidewalks a menacing place for boys to play. He was the youngest of five children in a poor family. Soler had tried drugs even before he met Doherty in 1983 when he was 9. The priest had been sent to Soler's home as an outreach counselor to help his brother Jose, who was three years older and had a penchant for violence. Jose would be placed in foster care. Doherty placed Jorge, who was also troubled, in Miami Bridge, a youth shelter then on NW South River Drive.

With other boys, a lengthy interval passed before Doherty, the friend and counselor, became an abuser. But Jorge Soler remembers his abuse starting immediately.

Doherty would pick Soler up at Miami Bridge and take him shopping for new shoes, shorts, and jeans before they were joined by two other boys, both named Victor. One was of Colombian descent, the other Puerto Rican. Doherty served them drinks that Soler thinks were drugged, possibly with Valium or Quaaludes, a popular sedative at the time. "He turned me on to drugs by not telling me he was giving me drugs," Soler says with a bitter smile.

Relaxed by the drug, Soler and both Victors were assaulted. On some occasions another priest — a junior pastor at St. Mary's Cathedral, possibly a seminarian, was also present. That priest took nude photographs of the boys and joined Doherty in raping them, he says.

Soler remembers riding in Doherty's car, the priest drunk or high on Valium, scanning Biscayne Boulevard for a boy who would turn a trick. Doherty had no interest in men. "If they were over 18, he didn't want to mess with them," he says.

Sometimes when he visited Doherty he'd be given $200, enough for a big drug score in the '80s. Other times, "it was hard to get a dollar out of him," he says, even when Soler was willing to trade sexual favors.