Cross examining the woman, Mr Brain’s barrister Iain Simkin KC suggested his client’s actions were not sexual.<\/p>\n
The woman replied: “I think someone’s hands all over your body when you hadn’t asked them to put them there, that’s sexual assault.”<\/p>\n
She told the court Mr Brain was “a predator,” who “picked off women he thought were vulnerable”.<\/p>\n
The woman described another occasion when she feared the priest was going to rape her after pushing her to the floor of his home.<\/p>\n
She said Mr Brain had suddenly pushed her down and said: “You need to admit that you’re somebody who wants to be raped and until you admit that you can’t be a spiritual person.”<\/p>\n
The court heard Mr Brain would talk about his “mission” of “creating a sort of postmodern expression of sexuality”.<\/p>\n
The woman said Mr Brain presided over a “deeply psychologically abusive” movement with a culture of fear, intimidation and bullying and his power was “reinforced by the Church,” which fast-tracked him for priesthood in 1991.<\/p>\n
NOS was initially celebrated by Church of England leaders for its nightclub-style services which incorporated live music and multimedia and attracted hundreds of young people to its congregation.<\/p>\n
But prosecutors have told the jury NOS “became a cult,” in which Mr Brain abused his position to sexually assault “a staggering number” of women from his congregation.<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cross examining the woman, Mr Brain’s barrister Iain Simkin KC suggested his client’s actions were not sexual. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":261126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[748,393,4884,1620,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-261125","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-sheffield","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114845009218219664","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/261126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}