THE trial of the founder of the Nine O’clock Service (NOS), Chris Brain, continued last week. The Inner London Crown Court heard from a witness who alleged that Mr Brain raped her before founding the Sheffield initiative, BBC News reported.
Mr Brain is charged with 37 sexual offences, including one rape. He denies all charges.
The witness, who cannot be named, said on Friday that Mr Brain raped her in 1983 or 1984, after inviting her to his home while his wife was away. She said that she was “traumatised” and “repulsed” by the rape, but thought that the only way in which she could deal with it was “to sort of park it deeply, and to forgive him”.
She went on to be involved with NOS after it was set up in 1986, initially at St Thomas Crookes, an Anglican-Baptist local ecumenical partnership in the Charismatic Evangelical tradition in Sheffield, but said that she always remained “frightened” of Mr Brain.
Iain Simkin KC, acting as Mr Brain’s defence lawyer, put it to the woman that the encounter had been consensual. She denied this and said that she had believed her involvement with NOS to be a “call from God”, and described Mr Brain as cultivating a “cult-like” atmosphere.
Earlier last week, Mr Brain’s personal tutor during his expedited ordination process in the early 1990s, the Revd Dr Marilyn Parry, told the court that she had refused to sign off on his ordination.
She said that Mr Brain would miss deadlines and be absent at short notice. She was “very shocked” that, on one occasion, when attempting to contact him, she was told that he could not come to the phone because he was receiving a massage from a female member of this team.
Mr Brain was nonetheless ordained, she said, after the Principal of the Northern Ordination Course disregarded her advice. She alleged that the then Archdeacon of Sheffield, and later Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Revd Stephen Lowe, told her that she should “stop voicing” concerns because Mr Brain “was doing very important work with young people who were not usually coming to church”.
The court also heard from a former curate of St Thomas Crookes, the Revd Dr Mark Stibbe. He said that the then Bishop of Sheffield, the Rt Revd David Lunn, said “we don’t conduct witch hunts in the diocese” when he tried reporting concerns about NOS.
The trial continues.
