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Lambs to Slaughter

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The two struck up a friendship, and it progressed quickly. "We would talk for hours and hours about my beliefs," says Sam. "He is a very intelligent man. He was my friend at first. Then he was my mentor. Then he was my father. And it went from that to the abuse."

It would be awhile 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 one occasion when 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 but couldn't recall how it got there. The rest of the details follow the same path as those 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 on 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 five dollars a week, and he dressed in hand-me-downs that his older brother got from a thrift store — but he says Doherty was willing to finance his drug habit, which had progressed to heroin. The priest visited Sam when his misbehavior led to his placement in a juvenile home. After Sam was sent to prison for having an illegal weapon and dealing drugs, he lost touch with Doherty.

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 better defend himself in the rough crowds where he lived. "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 might be in a criminal trial.

In 2002, after the scandal broke in the Boston archdiocese, Monsignor Marin conducted an inventory of abuse charges against active priests in the Miami archdiocese, which finally put Doherty 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-shape church. During 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 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, saying only that "millions" would be a fair characterization.

Kevin, the boy referred to Doherty for counseling related to his alcoholic mother, did not tell anyone about having had sex with the priest until a few years ago, when he saw an article about him being sued by another victim. Kevin told police that in the decades since the abuse, he's thought about Doherty every day.

Andy, another Seventies-era victim who had been impressed by Doherty's willingness to speak with him about adult subjects, no longer lives in the area. "It really ruined my life for a long time," he says of the abuse. Like other victims, he has battled addiction and he has had trouble keeping jobs and building relationships. Now he says he's clean, employed, and engaged to be married.

Jorge Soler's life after Doherty has followed a more tragic path. He has accumulated a long rap sheet of theft and drug offenses. He's awaiting trial on charges of credit card theft and stealing a car. He says his attorney has negotiated a plea deal that would give him about five years in prison, but Soler, a recovering crack and heroin addict, says he has made progress in drug treatment and is holding out hope for a program that would give him a measure of freedom in exchange for close monitoring of drug abuse.

Soler is Baptist now. That faith, plus his family, which includes a 10-year-old daughter, are enough to stave off the thoughts of suicide that have plagued him for as long as he can remember, he says. Asked whether he thought Doherty's religious faith was genuine, he shakes his head. "That's a disguise," he says of the priestly garments Doherty wore. "He doesn't care about nothing. Going around raping little kids: That's his belief."

Two other alleged victims whose accounts were not included in public files are also in jail — one for grand theft and armed burglary and the other for murder.

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