FLORIDA
BishopAccountability.org
Summary of Case: Rev. Neil Doherty, also known as “Gus”, was an active priest of the Miami archdiocese for nearly 33 years, and the subject of accusations of child sexual abuse which span his entire career. Doherty worked as a counselor for Catholic Family Services to whom the archdiocese would regularly refer troubled boys. Many of those boys have sinced surfaced with accusations against Doherty. Doherty’s modus operandi is reported to have been to drug the boys, some of whom have said they would awaken to find Doherty abusing them. Doherty’s accusers contend the archdiocese was warned many times over the decades that he was abusing children. In 1972 a fellow priest reported that Doherty had adopted an adolescent boy, who was sleeping in Doherty’s bedroom. The same priest had warned archdiocesan officials the year before that Doherty should stay away from drug rehabilitation facilities after a raid on a halfway house for boys at which Doherty was a supervisor. Both warnings were ignored. There were reports of the sexual abuse of boys by Doherty to the archdiocese in 1983 from a psychologist and in 1987 from a psychologist and a church secretary, after which Doherty was allowed to continue in ministry. The church secretary was fired. In 1992 the archdiocese received a report from the parents of a boy who claimed to have been drugged and raped by Doherty in 1978; the archdiocese settled with the family 1n 1994. In 1992 Doherty was sent for a psychological evaluation; his superiors were told he should be removed from his role as a parish priest. He was not. It wasn’t until the clergy sexual abuse crisis was making headlines in April 2002 that Doherty was placed on leave. In 2006 Doherty was arrested and charged with child sexual abuse for drugging and raping a boy between 1996-2000, beginning when the boy was 9 years old. By November 2011, 26 men had come forward with accusations that Doherty drugged and sexually abused them as children. In January 2013 Doherty pleaded “no contest” to the charges of lewd and lascivious acts on a child.
Ordained: 1969
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