Ex-priest found guilty of sexually assaulting nine women, used to run 'cult-like' church

Chris Brain, a former priest who was accused of abusing members of a "cult-like" church group, was found guilty of 17 counts of indecent assault against nine women on Wednesday (August 20). The 68-year-old was the head of the Nine O'Clock Service (NOS), an influential evangelical movement based in Sheffield in the 1980s and 90s. Brain was convicted of the charges after 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. The victim women were required to carry out household chores at the home he shared with his wife and daughter. They were also forced to put him to bed with sexual favours. Prosecutors told the jury some of the sexual assaults had taken place during massages Brian admitted to receiving from members of the homebase team. Brain denied all the charges against him.

In a somewhat similar case three years back, the Catholic Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member, was rocked by claims that a prominent priest abused several women, a case raising questions about how the Church sanctions offenders. Father Marko Rupnik, a 68-year-old Slovenian priest and world-renowned artist, is accused of abusing a number of women at a religious community in Ljubljana in the early 1990s, in what press reports said involved sexual and psychological violence

The case first emerged in the Italian media, before the Jesuits--one of the main Roman Catholic orders, founded in 1540 -- revealed it had sanctioned Rupnik, denying him the right to hear confession.

The Vatican's dicastery (ministry) for the doctrine of the faith was involved in the case but said it could not put Rupnik on trial because the statute of limitations had expired.