Lambs to Slaughter

"I hid my cigarette — like, cuffed it," says Sam, "and (Doherty) says, 'No, man, if you want to smoke it's not that big of a deal.' He was trying to be the cool adult. He was trying to gain my trust that way — and it worked."

It would be a while before Sam's parents learned of their son's new friend, and when they did they didn't approve. But Sam still visited Doherty almost every day, he says.

The priest would pour Sam a soda in a red plastic cup. In a 2005 interview with a police detective, Sam recalled that on one occasion after drinking the soda, "I passed out, and I walked out of (Doherty's) house later not remembering what had happened." He had pain in his rectum. Asked by the detective to elaborate, Sam responded irritably, "I felt as if I'd been fucked in my ass."

Sam found a wad of money in his pocket which he also didn't remember. The rest of the details mirror the familiar stories of boys 20 years before: Alcohol and drugs leading to blackouts and waking to Doherty in the midst of his assault.

It was the end of Sam's childhood. He was no longer interested in BMX racing or playing war games with kids from the same cul-de-sac. He was depressed, and Doherty recommended drugs. "I'd get angry all the time, and he said to drink beer and smoke pot because it would lessen my anger," says Sam. But those chemical effects made him yearn for uppers, "which is when I took coke."

Sam's family was not wealthy. His allowance was $5 a week, and he dressed in hand-me-down clothes his older brother got from a thrift store. But he says Doherty was willing to finance the boy's drug habit, which had progressed to heroin. When he was placed in a juvenile home for misbehavior, Doherty visited him there. Sam lost touch with Doherty when he was sent to prison for possessing an illegal weapon and dealing drugs.

Thanks in part to the counseling he received while incarcerated, Sam says, he came to understand how Doherty's abuse had affected his life — how it was at the root of his depression and his chemical addictions.

Sam has a vivid memory of a night not long after his release from prison when he was walking along NW 18th Street near St. Vincent Church. "I was trashed... fucked up on Oxycontin," says Sam. "And he approached me." By then Sam had taken to carrying a knife to defend himself in the rough crowds where he moved. "I was so filled with rage I pulled my knife. I shined the blade in the streetlight so he could see it. I said, 'If you come near me, I'll kill you.'"

Doherty backed off. Sam hasn't seen him since. If there's a next time, it may be in a criminal trial.

In 2002, after the scandal in the Boston archdiocese, Msr. Marin conducted an inventory of abuse charges against active priests in the Miami archdiocese which finally led to Doherty's placement on administrative leave. In 2004, Doherty retired.

Today St. Vincent is led by Rev. Joseph Maroor, who conducts Mass with a cheerful, earnest demeanor. On a Sunday in March, about 400 parishioners fill the pews of the T-shaped church. In his sermon, Maroor speaks about how in the moments before Mass he entered the sacristy and saw an elderly man holding a sign. "It said, 'Don't tell God how big your problems are. Tell your problems how big your God is.'" Maroor beamed. "What a wonderful truth!"

It'll take a very big God to get the Catholic Church out of its current fix. Herman is not allowed to say how much his clients have received in settlements so far, nor would he estimate how much he expects to win on unsettled cases. He says only that "millions" would be a fair characterization.

Kevin, the boy referred to Doherty for counseling related to his alcoholic mother, told no one about having had sex with Doherty until a few years ago, when he saw an article about another victim who was suing Doherty. Kevin told police that in the decades since the abuse, he's thought about Doherty every day.

Andy, another '70s-era victim once impressed by Doherty's willingness to talk to him about adult subjects, has moved away. "It really ruined my life for a long time," he says by phone. Like other abuse victims, Andy has battled addiction and had trouble keeping jobs and building relationships. Now, he says, he's clean, employed, and engaged to be married.