Lambs to Slaughter

Doherty was not at the pastoral center. Desperate, the 15-year-old boy resorted to blackmail. He informed a nun, Sister Joyce Newton, that he'd had sex with Doherty and contracted a venereal disease. Newton phoned Doherty, who instructed her to give Soler money from the center's petty cash drawer just to get rid of him.

This time there would be an investigation, by archdiocese chancellor Gerard T. LaCerra.

Documents subpoenaed in a civil suit Soler has filed against the archdiocese suggest that LaCerra's investigation was biased. As Soler's attorney, Herman calls the investigation "a fraud" and "a sham."

A month after Soler made his charges at the pastoral center, LaCerra wrote a letter to Archbishop McCarthy detailing Doherty's explanation for the incident. Doherty claimed he didn't know Soler except as a youth staying in a rooming house with other "clients" Doherty says he was trying to help. "This guy, if he was the same one I recall, was on 'crack' and acting crazy already," Doherty wrote. "The people who lived there wanted to get rid of him, because he was stealing from everyone."

The priest also attacked Sister Newton's credibility. He told LaCerra that the nun was sexually attracted to him and so "frustrated" by his lack of interest in her that she accused him of being gay and hating women. Soon after, Doherty fired Newton on grounds she was "mentally ill and severely unreliable." He claimed she had conducted interviews of pastoral center staff who encountered Soler during his visit, but "that detailed account was taken from my desk around the same time I fired Sr. Joyce Newton."

LaCerra attached his own letter to Doherty's, marking it "strictly personal and confidential." In it, LaCerra explained to the archbishop that Soler was "an acknowledged homosexual prostitute and drug dealer" and that Newton was a "seriously ill person" who was part of an effort to "defame Fr. Doherty."

In July 1987, four months after he spoke dismissively of Soler's report to the archbishop, LaCerra began his formal investigation. His report indicates that during one of his visits to the Soler household, Jose called. He was put on the phone with LaCerra, who asked him about his younger brother Jorge's clients. "Father Neil" is the first client Jose mentioned. The report also cites an interview in which Jorge told investigators of occasions when Doherty became drunk and had sex with him as well as the Victors and several other boys.

LaCerra never reported these allegations to the police, and no archdiocese records have materialized suggesting Doherty was disciplined. Instead Doherty continued his pastoral work counseling boys.

In August 1992, Archbishop McCarthy forwarded a letter to LaCerra. The letter opened with a now familiar refrain: "Our son was given drugs, Quaaludes in excess — and then raped by Father Neil Doherty, presently pastor of St. Vincent Parish in Margate, Fla."

The letter tells of a boy we'll call Tony, who had been an A-student at a Fort Lauderdale high school in 1978 when his parents went to meet with Doherty about counseling their son. Pastor Doherty at St. Anthony's, "absolutely charmed us," Tony's parents wrote. "So you can imagine how easy it was for Father Doherty to hide behind his authority as a priest and... to take advantage of a mentally ill, gullible 17-year-old boy. It was leading a lamb to slaughter."

In the letter, and in a later meeting with LaCerra, Tony's parents alleged that Doherty brainwashed their straight son into believing he was gay. On at least one occasion Doherty took Tony to a Palm Beach motel, his parents said, where he gave the boy beer, marijuana, and Quaaludes, then raped him after he fell asleep.

Six months before Tony was to graduate, he dropped out of high school. Two months after that he ran away from home. Tony's parents wouldn't see him again for five years. He moved out of the region, became deeply depressed, and was leading what his parents called a "hand-to-mouth existence."

In 1994, LaCerra wrote a memo recounting a phone conversation he had with Tony in which LaCerra offered counseling. Tony rejected the offer on grounds that archdiocese counseling was what had created his problem in the first place.

Doherty was sent for psychological treatment at the Institute for the Living, a resort-like clinic in Hartford, Connecticut, that's a frequent destination for troubled priests. The archdiocese's ostensible goal was to determine whether Doherty had the psychological makeup to continue as a pastor, or if he should be removed. Dr. Richard Bridburg recommended the archdiocese issue a "temporary suspension from [Doherty's] duties while further investigation is taking place."