A 2014 graduate of The Dalles-Wahtonka High School, Michael Cele Stephens, was sentenced Tuesday to 15 years in prison for sexually abusing six girls aged 13 to 15.
At the emotionally charged sentencing, three mothers of victims spoke, as did Stephens, his mother and his pastor, said Wasco County Chief Deputy District Attorney Leslie Wolf.
“The parents talked about how these girls have been hugely affected by what the defendant did, including cutting, drug abuse, suicidal thoughts,” Wolf said.
Stephens, 19, of Sevenmile Hill Road, said he knew that God would forgive him.
Wolf said the sentence “reflected the number of victims and their vulnerability.” Stephens met his victims through church and 4-H, Wolf said.
The case began unfolding last July, when a mother of a 13-year-old victim saw that her daughter was having “an intimate conversation” with Stephens on social media, Wolf said.
The mother took the evidence to The Dalles Police Department, and a detective interviewed Stephens, who “started disclosing he’d had sexually inappropriate relationships with minor females,” Wolf said.
Stephens was arrested on multiple counts. He admitted to abusing girls starting in
September 2014 and continuing through late July 2015.
Wolf said it wasn’t rare for a sex offender to have multiple victims, but it was “very rare” to charge for so many “because we don’t always find out about them all.”
He was sentenced in Wasco County Circuit Court on six counts, one count for each victim. The counts were: two charges of second-degree sodomy; second-degree sex abuse; first-degree sex abuse; luring a minor; and third degree sex abuse.
He disclosed at least four other victims in addition to the six victims, but those families —either the parents or the children themselves —were not willing to be interviewed, Wolf said.
Wolf said The Dalles Police Det. Sgt. Doug Kramer was “instrumental in the investigation.”
Stephens had no prior criminal history, Wolf said. He was an assistant youth leader at his church and was active in 4-H.
He said Stephens’ pattern was to meet the girls, mostly through church youth group, then they’d start texting each other. Then they exchanged messages on social media, including sharing intimate photographs, Wolf said.
Social media applications used included Facebook, Snapchat and Kik, she said.
“He would convince them to meet up with him and then the sexual abuse would occur,” Wolf said.
Most of the crimes occurred at the victims’ homes or their family member’s home; one was in a parking lot; and one was at a home of one of Stephens’ family members, Kramer said.
Wolf said the victims shared in common a desire to communicate with someone.
“There were a lot of things going on with the girls’ lives at the time that made them want to talk to someone,” Wolf said. “And that someone was him. They trusted him because he seemed safe. They started talking about their life in general.”
She said young girls that age are “so vulnerable to pressures anyway: Popularity, wanting to be liked, wanting to feel beautiful, and again, he represents himself as a safe person, he’s a leader, he’s 4-H involved, his family is a good family, so he appears safe and trusted.”
She said the girls are all still in the area. “This trauma is not going to go away, it could be a lifetime for girls.
“It can affect their future relationships. There’s always that self blame, they feel like they’ve lost parental trust, they feel they’ve disappointed their families.”
They worry about the photos they sent to Stephens. “Those images are still out there,” she said.
The charges against Stephens ranged from kissing one girl to sexual intercourse and deviant sexual intercourse, which is oral and anal sodomy.
Wolf said sex offenders commit an average of 119 crimes before they are caught.
Men who primarily abuse girls abuse an average of 12 girls.
Men who primarily abuse boys abuse twice as many. And 70 percent of offenders admit having child and adult victims.
Wolf said of Stephens’ parents, “They taught their kids morals, they got them engaged in good programs, they did everything that parents should. They appear to be good people and good parents.”
One of the mothers said the community doesn’t know enough about these types of offenses.
“And I think that it is important to remember that one in four girls will be sexually assaulted before they’re 18 and one in 10 boys will be sexually assaulted before they’re 18,” Wolf said.
She encouraged parents to communicate with their children and know what they’re doing and get to know the people that they think are safe.
“And when they tell you something that’s happened to them, be supportive,” she said.
She said the victims “feel as if they’ve let their parents down in so many ways. These kids have support. There’s a lot of kids that don’t have that parental support and the trauma’s that much harder for them to deal with.”
She said the district attorney’s office wants kids to report abuse — just five to 13 percent of victims report, and often years later, she said — and it wants the community to be healthy. “We’re very careful making sure the sentence is fair and just, that the offender is accountable and that our victims feel safe and are protected from this happening to them again.”
Because of a conflict in the case, Stephens had a public defender, Kasia Rutledge, and judge, Eric Bergstrom, from Portland.
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