Neil Doherty, South Florida Priest, Sentenced On Child Sex Abuse Charges

A priest who accused of drugging and sexually assaulting a teenaged parishioner will spend the foreseeable future in prison.

Father Neil Doherty, 69, was sentenced Monday on charges he abused a teenaged Margate boy in the 1990s, according to NBC6.

Doherty pled no contest earlier this month to the charges, which include lewd and lascivious conduct on a minor, in exchange for a reduced sentence.

The victim, now in his 20s and living outside of Florida, alleged the priest gave him soda laced with drugs and raped him.

"[The victim] passed out and when he woke up he was being sodomized," the victim's attorney Jeff Herman told Reuters earlier in the month.

A previous lawsuit filed by Herman against Doherty yielded a largely-symbolic $100 million verdict, among the largest judgments against an individual priest. In that case, Doherty was accused of trolling of the streets of Miami's Little Haiti where he befriended the teenager he allegedly abused.

According to the Sun Sentinel, Doherty was accused of child sex abuse at least 27 times since 1972. He will now be remanded to a maximum 15 years in prison.