OREGON
The Oregonian
By Aimee Green | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Attorneys for a girl who was molested by a church youth leader in The Dalles filed a $5 million lawsuit this week against the church — claiming it should have learned how to protect children from sexual predators after a previous church leader molested a child.
First Christian Church failed to develop child-protection protocols that might have stopped Michael Cele Stephens from molesting the girl starting when she was 12 or 13, the lawsuit says.
Stephens was sentenced in April to 15 years in prison for sexually abusing the girl and five other girls, ages 13 to 15, according to a story in The Dalles Chronicle newspaper. The story quotes a prosecutor as saying Stephens met the girls through church or a 4-H Club and that a prosecutor said the girls reacted to the abuse with “cutting, drug abuse, suicidal thoughts.”
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