A healer sexually assaulted women patients as he treated them for back pain, a court heard.

George Boak, 70, is alleged to have groped three women during the treatment sessions at his home, Bradford Crown Court was told yesterday.

Prosecutor Michael Smith told a jury that the trial was not about whether healing was valid, because each complainant got something out of the treatment to a greater or lesser degree.

But Mr Smith said: “At all material times, the defendant operated as a healer.

"It is the Crown’s case the assaults were committed on the three women when they were the defendant’s patients. The allegations are he had sexually touched them when they went to him for treatment for pain.”

Mr Smith told the jury that the first victim to complain visited Boak regularly from two and a half years ago for chronic back pain, and the treatment worked.

But he alleged that during the treatment Boak made inappropriate remarks, calling her stunning and beautiful. She felt uncomfortable and stopped going to see him, but her back pain persisted and she went back to him last year.

The woman claimed the healer put his hand down her T-shirt onto her breast, pushed himself against her and touched her indecently.

Mr Smith said: “He told her to trust him and to take off her underwear, and kissed her on the stomach as she tried to get up.”

The woman reported the matter to police and Boak, of Aysgarth Avenue, Lightcliffe, was arrested. He denied ever touching the woman indecently and was bailed.

Police seized his address book and diary, containing details of his clients, and began ringing them. One of them claimed she had been sexually assaulted by the healer some years before.

She said she and her husband had received treatment from Boak in 2000.

Mr Smith said: “The defendant suggested the best way to treat her was for her to be naked. Perhaps because her husband was there and had treatment in the same way, she agreed to have the treatment naked.”

The court heard she stopped going while she had a child, but then returned to the healer while her husband looked after the baby, and was treated, while naked, by him for a number of years.

She visited him for a last time in 2005 and he indecently assaulted her, the court was told. She said: “George, what are you doing?” and he apologised and said: “Sorry, I got carried away.”

The woman told her husband but did not report it to police because she thought she had been stupid and gullible, the court heard.

The defendant was arrested and admitted indecently touching her but said he thought she had invited him to do so. Boak was charged and appeared in court, and newspaper coverage of the court appearance led to a third woman coming forward and claiming to be a victim.

The woman said that the second time she visited Boak for treatment for back pain, nine years ago, he indecently assaulted her. She also told her husband but did not report it to police.

The defendant denied touching her sexually.

Mr Smith added: “The Crown’s case is that three women, independently of one another, have made similar allegations of sexual assault against the defendant.”

Boak pleads not guilty to two charges of sexual assault and one of indecent assault. The trial continues.