Conviction Christian institutions & contexts Other or denomination not established Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, United Kingdom (tried at Inner London Crown Court) · 2025

United Kingdom: leader of the Church of England's 'Nine O'Clock Service' convicted of indecent assaults on nine women

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

ordained Church of England priest; founder/leader, the Nine O'Clock Service (NOS)

Organization

Nine O'Clock Service (NOS), Sheffield, Church of England

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

Brain, an ordained Church of England priest, founded and led the Nine O'Clock Service, an unconventional nightclub-style congregation in Sheffield that gave him singular spiritual authority over a self-contained community of young worshippers, which he used to indecently assault nine women over more than a decade.

Pastoral or clerical authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2025-08-20 · conviction

Inner London Crown Court, England. Found guilty of 17 counts of indecent assault against nine women committed in Sheffield in the 1980s-90s (acquitted on 15 further counts); jury discharged 2025-08-21. Sentencing date not yet reported in available sources.

Documented coercion mechanisms

founded and led an experimental church service that functioned as a closed, self-contained community
position as spiritual leader of NOS used to select and isolate victims from among his own congregation

Cited record

Sources

official prosecutorial record criminal disposition and nexus Crown Prosecution Service, 'Former vicar convicted for sexual assaults connected to his nightclub "Nine O Clock service".': CPS release confirming the Inner London Crown Court conviction on 17 counts, the NOS context, and the Sheffield location of the offending.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/former-vicar-convicted-sexual-assaults-connected-his-nightclub-nine-o-clock-service Corpus classification: official-prosecutorial-record; evidentiary role: criminal-disposition-and-nexus. SHA-256 761e3b8ff1e1c93d0b76673ef9b35292edc4c659a1dc8a9c02c743f878f00d5e
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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