Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Other or denomination not established Northampton, Northamptonshire, England, United Kingdom · 2016

United Kingdom: elderly Jesus Army member jailed for sexually abusing two boys at sect communal houses

Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

Jesus Army community member resident in communal houses shared with the child victims

Organization

Jesus Army / Jesus Fellowship Church

Spiritual nexus

Both victims were small children placed by their families' membership into the Jesus Army's shared communal households, where the sect's doctrine of common life put them in the same house as an unrelated adult member with no independent supervision — the mechanism the Redress Scheme later found systemic across the community.

  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2016-11-01 · conviction and sentencing

    Northampton Crown Court, England. Clifford Brett, 66, of Northampton, was jailed for five years total — four years for abusing one boy who was targeted as he slept at a Jesus Army house in Preston, and a further twelve months for luring a second boy, still of primary school age, to his bedroom. Both offences occurred at Jesus Army communal houses and were prosecuted as part of Operation Lifeboat.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • communal 'household' living arrangement placing an unrelated adult member in the same house as young children
  • targeted one boy while he slept and lured a second to a bedroom under pretext

Primary record

Sources

regional newspaper court reporting verdict and sentencing report Lancashire Post: 'OAP jailed for abusing young boys at Jesus Army homes'.

Court report naming Brett, describing both offences and the five-year total sentence.

Related record

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