MIAMI (FL)
Miami Herald
BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com
CHARGED: The Rev. Neil Doherty is the first Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Miami to be charged with sexual battery on a child younger than 12.
When a Catholic priest was arrested on charges of raping a Broward County youth, the Archdiocese of Miami extended ''pastoral concern'' and ''prayers'' for the alleged victim and his family.
But four days after the Jan. 26 arrest of the Rev. Neil Doherty, the archdiocese took a decidedly less sympathetic position.
Church leaders, in response to the youth's sexual-abuse lawsuit, said ''his own negligence'' was to blame for what the priest allegedly did to him as a 10-year-old.
In the suit, the youth claims the former pastor of St. Vincent Catholic Church in Margate repeatedly sedated and sodomized him almost a decade ago.