A woman has told a court she was regularly called to the home of a former Church of England priest to “put him to bed”, where he would touch her and made her massage him while partially clothed.
Christopher Brain, 68, is accused of using his position as leader of the Nine O’Clock Service (NOS) – an experimental congregation based in Sheffield – to groom and sexually assault female members of the group between 1981 and 1995.
He denies one count of rape and 36 counts of indecent assault involving 13 women.
On Monday, jurors at Inner London Crown Court were played a recorded police interview with one complainant, who described being “trapped” in a controlling relationship with Brain after joining the NOS community in the late 1980s.
She said she had been encouraged to see him as a spiritual authority and was told she needed “healing” because she was sexually repressed.
During her time in the group, she said Brain would call her at random and ask her to visit him at home.
“I would go and put him to bed – that sort of thing,” she said.
“Sometimes I would go and he would have no clothes on. I would massage him.
“My clothes would be off apart from my underwear. He would feel me.”
She said Brain would lie on top of her, rub himself against her, and that she believed he was often aroused.
The woman said she felt unable to say no and was desperate to be seen as a good Christian.
“I was terrified of him,” she said.
“All I wanted was for it to be good and to be OK.
“He was very scary. The only way forward was to get my relationship right with Chris, so I was trapped – really trapped.”
She said she began to fear receiving calls from him and described him as someone who could “easily humiliate people”.
In an earlier encounter, she said Brain slapped her on the bottom, and in another, he whispered “I love your arse” as he passed her in a church service.
She said he once grabbed her hand and put it on his crotch over his trousers, and another time told her: “Don’t close your mouth – because I want to put my c*** in it.”
The woman said she didn’t understand what was happening at the time and had been made to feel ashamed and confused.
She said she was repeatedly told by Brain that she was “a sex maniac”.
“I couldn’t trust what I felt any more,” she said.
“I didn’t like it. I thought it was wrong. But I thought if I questioned it, I wasn’t being a good Christian.”
She said it was only when another woman asked if she thought the relationship was abusive that she began to realise what had happened.
“She said: ‘Do you ever think it was abusive?’ and I suddenly saw it,” the complainant said.
“I had been controlled – psychologically, spiritually, emotionally. Bit by bit, I had been bullied.”
Giving further evidence in person from behind a screen on Monday afternoon, the complainant was cross-examined by Brain’s barrister, Iain Simkin KC.
Mr Simkin put it to her that Brain “doesn’t accept the degree of sexual contact that you say took place”.
He said the defendant denied slapping her bottom, denied saying “you’ve got a nice arse”, and did not accept that he had touched her breasts or genitals, or placed her hand on his penis.
Mr Simkin suggested she had choices at every stage and could have walked away or reported what had happened.
“You weren’t imprisoned,” he said. “You weren’t taken there in a cage.
“Did you do what you wanted to do because it was the lesser of two evils – to protect yourself from sin?”
The complainant replied: “I made the decision not to protect myself because I felt trapped – by him and everything that followed.”
She said she did not feel able to question Brain’s behaviour because she saw him as representing God.
“You’re not allowed to question because he represented God,” she told the court.
“I didn’t feel I had a choice.”
When asked why she did not remove herself from a situation involving a church leader who, she alleged, had slapped her on the bottom, she said: “Because he was a man of God.
“I believed he was representing God. The things I instinctively felt weren’t valid.”
Mr Simkin suggested she could simply have stopped going to NOS, or reported the alleged incidents to others in the church.
She said: “It was riskier to me to leave a congregation that represented God.
“To leave that would have been a greater sin. I didn’t have the wherewithal to confront what happened.”
She added: “I hadn’t developed that muscle in a Christian environment.”
Earlier in the day, one juror was formally discharged for personal reasons.
The trial continues.
Sign up to our London Court & Crime newsletter for the latest major court updates and breaking news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up HERE.
