Steve Duin: Another Trial for the High Priest and Pedophile
By Steve Duin
That the case of Michael Sperou has turned, once again, on the word “victim” is the cruelest of ironies. To be labeled “victim” at North Clackamas Bible Community, where Sperou was high priest and pedophile, was to be derided and shamed. Whenever you showed emotion or voiced complaint, you were mocked for playing the victim. “The word is used as a weapon in the church in the most condescending way,” says Jennifer Olajuyin, who escaped the personality cult 15 years ago. “It’s a word they use to make fun of people.” And for the Oregon Supreme Court, it’s the damning word that justifies a new trial for Sperou, four years into a 20-year sentence for unlawful sexual penetration. Two weeks ago, the state’s high court called foul on the trial court judge and the Court of the Appeals regarding testimony leading to Sperou’s 2015 conviction. For years, seven women accused Sperou of sexually abusing them. The Supreme Court says Multnomah County Circuit Judge Cheryl Albrecht did not err when she allowed the prosecutor, Chris Mascal, to describe those women as victims. “We reach a different conclusion, however, regarding the use of that word by the state’s witnesses,” Oregon Supreme Court Justice Chris Garrett writes. That amounts “to impermissible vouching, and the trial court should have granted defendant’s motion to preclude such references.” North Clackamas Bible Community was torn apart in 1996 when the seven women, then teenagers, first told police Sperou had molested them, frequently while they spent the night in his bed. At the time, prosecutors didn’t think they could win a conviction. When they heard new accusations from Shannon Clark and charged Sperou in 2014, allegations by the other six women were beyond the statute of limitations. Over defense objections, Albrecht allowed the jury to hear testimony from each of the survivors, so they could better determine whether Sperou accidentally touched Clark or if fondling young girls was his stock-in-trade. Unlike Sperou, the women – Amy Martin Robinson, Bryn Garrett, Rachel Garrett Schackart, Emily Martin Bertram, Jessica Watson, Clark and Olajuyin – did not present as victims in that courtroom. They allowed The Oregonian/OregonLive to use their names and photographs in stories leading up to the trial. They barely flinched when some of their parents, still wedded to Sperou, derided their accounts on the witness stand. “The first trial felt like a really good time in my life,” Olajuyin, now 36, said Wednesday. “I was surrounded by people who knew what had happened. I had the opportunity to confront my parents, confront Mike, and all the other people who were complicit in this.” But over the course of the two-week trial, Garrett writes, police investigators “repeatedly referred to (Clark) and the other testifying accusers as ‘victims.’” So did at least one former member of the church. Such “vouching” – for the credibility of another witness – is “categorically inadmissible,” Garrett says. Then he adds the following: “Given that defendant faced not one but seven witnesses who claimed to be victims of his abuse, and because the testimony of those witnesses was the only evidence that any of the abuse occurred, the repeated references to all of those witnesses as ‘victims’ could have had a subtle but powerful effect on the jury.” You can see the problem for women in sex-abuse cases. If only one steps forward, it’s he said, she said. If seven women arrive with harrowing stories of abuse, the repetition is apparently too much for a jury to handle. I understand why the Supreme Court was cautious here, especially when the rules on admissibility – in State vs. Williams and State vs. Baughman – continue to evolve. And cruel ironies aside, these women can handle another trial. They’ve dealt with worse. Olajuyin’s parents joined the church when she was 4 years old, and she grew up in group homes where everyone except Sperou was repeatedly told they were “sinful and black to the core. “Mike could sin in spectacular fashion,” Olajuyin says. “Then he’d repent, and he was more holy because he went through the cycle of sinning and major repentance. “He told adults in the church he had an attraction to young girls. They thought because he admitted that, he wasn’t going to act on it. And they delivered girls to his bed.” In 2015, the jury heard evidence of that, and reached its guilty verdict in two hours. The women’s stories made all the difference, and they will again if the women are allowed to share them. -- Steve Duin Contact: stephen.b.duin@gmail.com
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