Christopher Brain, 68, is accused of abusing his position as leader of the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS) to sexually assault a ‘staggering number’ of women followers
A former priest accused of sexual offences against 13 women in his congregation led an evangelical movement that held “extremely disturbing” services featuring “young women behaving in what looked like a controlled manner,” a court has heard.
Christopher Brain, 68, from Wilmslow, Cheshire, was leader of the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS), part of the Church of England, in Sheffield between 1986 and 1995. He has been charged with one count of rape and 36 counts of indecent assault between 1981 and 1995, all of which he denies. The prosecution allege NOS became a cult where Brain abused his position to sexually assault a “staggering number” of women followers, exerting control over their lives and ostracising them from friends and family.
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Inner London Crown Court has heard a “homebase team” was set up to “care for” Brain – referred to as “the Lycra Lovelies” or “the Lycra Nuns” – with witnesses reporting seeing the defendant surrounded by attractive women in lingerie at his home looking after his needs. Mark Stibbe was a curate of St Thomas’s Church in Sheffield when NOS was holding services there. Giving evidence on Wednesday, he said there was “concern” about the direction NOS was taking and discussion about Brain and what was going on at his home.
He told the court: “I remember one church administrator or finance officer at St Thomas’s who was like an old school army man and he brought up the negative optics, potentially anyway, of scantily clad, lycra-wearing pretty young women as he put it coming to and from Chris Brain’s house on a regular basis to perform ‘domestic duties’.”
The witness said the man got a “roasting” for asking whether there was “anything untoward” about it and that others at St Thomas’s felt that if the church’s vicar, Robert Warren, was not going to intervene then junior clergy had no business doing so. He said it did not appear to him that Reverend Warren was able to control Brain.
He also recalled there was “a lot of controversy” over the Greenbelt Christian arts festival “into which NOS had poured many hours and many thousands of pounds.” Dr Stibbe moved to another church in 1993 but attended a NOS service once it had moved to a new location in Ponds Forge after a member of his congregation expressed concerns to him about it.
Of his visit, he said: “My view at the time was that it was extremely disturbing and that my friend who had said it was disturbing was correct. The reason I found it disturbing is that the things that had been reported from the Greenbelt Festival about girls gyrating in scantily clad costume in a worship context, that is what I was seeing in this context.”
Asked if he thought the women were willing participants, he told jurors: “This is the thing that concerns me. I couldn’t tell. In a progressive culture… it seemed to me to be a graphic, vivid contradiction to have young women behaving in what looked like a controlled manner.”
Earlier the court heard from Rev Warren who said allegations that emerged about Brain’s abuse “came as a total shock,” although he admitted he had a sense of “cult-like elements” emerging in NOS. Asked while giving evidence over a video link to explain what kinds of behaviour he saw, he said: “Just a sort of controlling of people and a focus on Chris Brain almost as a sort of guru.”
He added: “I think it was a sense of deference to Chris Brain that if you asked people about the service they would always say, well what Chris thinks is or what Chris wants is. With the other services I wouldn’t get that sort of response.”
The reverend said if NOS had continued to hold services at St Thomas’s he expects that behaviour would have become clearer and he would have done something about it. He told the court that NOS had 400 regular worshippers when it left St Thomas’s and at one stage there was a mass confirmation service of 93 members of NOS – “the largest group that we had ever confirmed in one church.”
He agreed that NOS was exciting and innovative for the Church of England and that it could engage young people in ways the church was until then failing to do, incorporating “rave” culture and music as part of worship. “Some people who were at that service would come from 20 or 30 miles away because they found the service so inspiring,” he said.
The witness also told jurors that NOS functioned independently financially from St Thomas’s, and that NOS contributed to payments to Brain as a “lay leader” and then as a priest once he was ordained.
The trial continues.