A retired Portland Public Schools teacher was found guilty Friday of sexually touching six Oregon City middle school students while he was substituting as their gym teacher over the course of one day in 2015.

Clackamas County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Jones said he found the girls' testimony to be compelling, detailed and credible.

They described during the two-week trial how Norman Scott, now 66, touched their breasts, thighs, bottoms and other parts of their bodies while they were in seventh grade at Gardiner Middle School. Most were 12 at the time.

Jones said he couldn't conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Scott was guilty of abusing two other students because both initially reported that Scott hadn't assaulted them.

The judge said he thought it was unlikely that the girls had colluded to bring false accusations against Scott. It was the first and only time Scott had been at the school.

"The possibility of accidental touchings is just not reasonable," Jones said. "There are too many incidents for there to be one accident after another, after another."

He found Scott guilty of third-degree sexual abuse and harassment. He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 16.

The trial included testimony from more than two dozen people, including the students, some of their parents and the school's principal and vice principal.

Scott waived his right to a jury trial and chose not to testify in his own defense. He was indicted in June 2016, arrested the next month and posted $100,000 bail the same day. He has been out of jail custody since then.

The judge allowed him to remain out on bail pending his sentencing, with conditions that include no contact with any children other than his infant grandchild.

Scott taught for 36 years as a health and physical education teacher with Portland Public Schools. He taught at Sellwood Middle School and later Grant High School before retiring in June 2012.

He worked off and on as a substitute teacher for the next three years in the Lake Oswego, North Clackamas and Oregon City school districts until the allegations at Gardiner Middle School surfaced, said Clackamas County Senior Deputy District Attorney Scott Healy.

Scott groped the girls over the course of four coed gym class periods from the beginning to the end of the school day on Oct. 5, 2015, Healy said.

Nelson ordered girls and boys to perform unfamiliar warmup exercises before playing kickball, Healy said.

One exercise had students of the same gender pairing up, with one student doing a type of stretch while another student crawled underneath them. Some students said they saw Scott touching the hips of girls who were stretching to arch their bottoms higher into the air and that he stared at their bottoms.

Another exercise again had students pair up by gender, sit on the floor back to back with their arms interlocked and try to stand up.

One girl said Scott stood over her during that exercise, reached down and grabbed her breast to pull her up. Another student said during the next class period, Scott grabbed her breast and upper thigh, with his thumb pressed against her crotch during the same exercise. She said he did this two or three times.

A third girl from a PE class earlier in the day said Scott rubbed her back twice while she was helping take attendance, rubbed her shoulder and at one point ran his hand through her hair and remarked that it was pretty. She walked away from him at one point, but he followed her.

A fourth student said she asked to go to the bathroom before her class ended, but Scott refused to let her go. He put his arm around her and grabbed her bottom, Healy said.

Other girls reported Scott hugged them, rested his hands on their hips and stared at their breasts, Healy said. During the warmups, students reported being divided by gender and that Scott spent the majority of the time with the girls.

Some of the girls reported to the principal the same day that Scott touched them. He was pulled from the class by the vice principal by the end of the day because of the allegations, Healy said.

When interviewed by police, Scott denied touching any students inappropriately and claimed he had grabbed a few students by the elbows to help them up, the prosecutor said.

"The bottom line is that the repeated nature of this and the manner in which these girls are touched, it wasn't an accident," Healy said.

Defense attorney Jacob Houze said Scott was falsely accused. He noted inconsistencies and contradictions in the students' statements, such as one telling her mother that she was grabbed on one side, but telling police she was grabbed on the other side.

The students were "just wrong" in their accounts, Houze said.

Four staff members were in the gym during at least two of the class periods, but none reported seeing any students touched inappropriately, he said. The vice principal had been sent specifically by the principal to look for any abuse during the eighth period, he said, and testified that he didn't see anything improper despite watching the students' exercises.

Houze also said Oregon City police didn't conduct a thorough investigation and didn't set out "to find out what really happened." Police didn't interview students who may have witnessed the abuse or students from an all-boys gym class to see if they had done the same warmup exercises.

"We have each accuser's individual allegations, which are rife with contradiction, dramatic inconsistencies and none of them enjoy a shred of corroboration," Houze said.

Healy said there may be some discrepancies in some students' statements, but each student was "crystal clear" and consistent in how Scott touched them.

State records show Scott has an active teaching license to teach in grades from pre-kindergarten to 12th grade that expires in 2020.

Scott filed a $10,000 lawsuit in July 2015 against Portland Public Schools accusing the district of wrongly complaining to the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission about a text he sent a student four years earlier. The student was also a teaching assistant and Scott was asking her in the message if she knew where some teaching materials were, Scott's attorney told The Oregonian/OregonLive at the time.

The commission dismissed the school district complaint in February 2015. Scott's civil suit was also dismissed in December 2015, court records show.

Scott also made headlines in 2009 when a Grant High School student uploaded a four-minute video onto YouTube of Scott teaching a sex education class for 10th-grade students. He was wearing a condom on his head and a pair of red underwear over his pants with a hole in the middle.

The school district told him to never teach that way again.

-- Everton Bailey Jr.

ebailey@oregonian.com

503-221-8343; @EvertonBailey