Portland Religious Leader Convicted Of Sex Abuse…Again

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – A jury has found a disgraced religious leader guilty of sexually abusing a former church member when she was a child.

The Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office says 69-year-old Michael Sperou was convicted Friday of two counts of first-degree sexual penetration of a person under the age of 12.

The Oregonian/OregonLive reports this is the second sexual abuse trial for Sperou, the guru of the North Clackamas Bible Community.

Sperou established the small nondenominational congregation in the early 1980s that operated out of Portland.

His 2015 conviction for sex crimes was tossed by the Oregon Supreme Court, which concluded that witnesses in the original trial had improperly referred to the accuser as a victim.