Sheffield priest assaulted ‘staggering number’ of women, court told

A priest who led a “cult” within the Church of England sexually assaulted a “staggering” number of women in his congregation, a court heard.

Chris Brain expected victims to “put him to bed” with “sexual favours” in the bedroom of his family home, jurors in his trial were told.

Prosecutor Tim Clark KC said the women lived in “absolute terror of being ostracised” from the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS), an influential evangelical church movement led by Mr Brain in Sheffield in the 1980s and 1990s.

Mr Brain, 68, now of Park Road in Wilmslow, Cheshire, is on trial at Inner London Crown Court for 36 indecent assaults and one rape against 13 women. He denies all the charges.

NOS was initially lauded by Church of England leaders for its “ground-breaking” nightclub-style services which incorporated live music and multimedia to attract young people to St Thomas Church, Mr Clark told the jury as he opened the prosecution’s case on Tuesday.

But he said the group “became a cult” in which members were encouraged to cut themselves off from family and friends, leaving them “utterly dependent” on NOS and “desperate for the attention and praise” of its leader Mr Brain.

The court heard Mr Brain told one of his alleged victims he was helping her to “heal from her sexual repression” and urged another to use her “sexual power” to “glorify God”.

The jury heard some young women who joined the movement were recruited to a team which looked after Mr Brain, his wife and their daughter in their Sheffield home, where the defendant was “surrounded by attractive women” wearing lingerie or other revealing clothing.

One woman who joined the team – referred to as “the Lycra lovelies” or “the Lycra nuns” – told a police interview she was warned she would be excluded if she disobeyed Mr Brain.

The court heard another woman, who joined NOS as a student, said she had been required to “separate from her former life and accept NOS as her new family”.

Some of Mr Brain’s alleged victims told police they felt they had been “brainwashed” and “groomed” by him.

Mr Brain would “suddenly appear” beside female members as they walked in the street and ask them to get into his car, the jury heard.

Mr Clark said: “Those who did not keep the defendant happy would find themselves estranged from the group – this was incredibly disconcerting to young impressionable women who had become emotionally dependent on NOS and, as a result, highly vulnerable.”

Church leaders confronted Mr Brain in 1995 after a NOS member informed them the defendant had put women on “a rota” to put him into bed, the court heard.

Told by Stephen Lowe, then archdeacon of Sheffield, it was alleged he had abused up to 40 women, Mr Brain replied: “I thought it was more”, the trial heard.

The jury heard Mr Brain had admitted in a BBC documentary in 1995 to having “improper sexual relationships” with members of his congregation.

Mr Clark said Mr Brain was likely to tell the jury any sexual contact with the women was consensual.

But the prosecutor said “any capacity to consent” had been “removed by the domineering nature of the defendant, by his control over their entire lives and by their absolute terror of being ostracised”.

The alleged offences are said to have taken place between 1981 and 1995.

The trial, which is expected to last six to eight weeks, continues.