Ex-priest found guilty of 17 indecent assaults
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A former priest accused of abusing members of a “cult-like” church group he led has been found guilty of 17 counts of indecent assault against nine women.
Chris Brain, 68, was head of the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS), an influential evangelical movement based in Sheffield in the 1980s and 90s.
Brain, of Wilmslow, in Cheshire, was convicted of the charges following a trial at Inner London Crown Court.
He was found not guilty of another 15 charges of indecent assault, while jurors are continuing to deliberate on a further four counts of indecent assault and one charge of rape.
Wearing a black suit and black shirt, Brain showed no emotion as the jury foreman delivered the verdicts.
The jury are expected to return to court on Thursday to continue their deliberations on the remaining counts.
During the trial, prosecutor Tim Clark KC said some of the women had been sexually abused after being recruited to a so-called “homebase team” charged with looking after Brain and his family.
He told the court the group became known among NOS members as the “Lycra lovelies” or the “Lycra nuns” after witnesses reported seeing the defendant surrounded by attractive women in lingerie at his home.
The court heard that the women were required to carry out household chores at the home he shared with his wife and daughter, the prosecution said, as well as putting him to bed with sexual favours.
Prosecutors told the jury some of the sexual assaults had taken place during massages Brain admitted to receiving from members of the homebase team.
He told the jury they were intended to be for “tensions” on his body but could evolve into consensual “sensual touching”, which he said was between friends and “no big deal”.
He denies all the charges against him.
The NOS began in Sheffield in 1986 and was initially celebrated by Church of England leaders for its nightclub-style services, which attracted hundreds of young people.
The Church fast-tracked Brain’s ordination as a priest in 1991 due to the success of the NOS, with jurors told the group spent “large sums of money” to obtain robes worn by the actor Robert De Niro in the film The Mission for Brain to wear in his ordination ceremony.
In the early 1990s the NOS moved to the city’s Ponds Forge leisure centre in order to accommodate the growing congregation.
But prosecutors told the jury NOS “became a cult” in which Brain abused his position to sexually assault “a staggering number” of women from his congregation.
The group was dissolved in 1995 when concerns about Brain’s behaviour were first raised.
The jury heard Brain later admitted in a BBC documentary, aired the same year, to having “improper sexual conduct with a number of women”.
He resigned his holy orders two days before the programme was broadcast.
Content retrieved from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20662dxl88o.
