Shipley ‘preacher’: I am not a violent man

Brian Jackson said he was a born again Christian who found God at Bradford’s Abundant Life Centre.

Jackson, 50, of Hall Lane, Windhill, Shipley, told Bradford Crown Court yesterday his alleged victims had made up the allegations because they “wanted to see him suffer”.

He is accused of raping three women, sexually abusing another woman and a man and biting a woman on the lip and pushing her through a closed door.

Jackson, who told the police he was “a preacher of the word of God” said he slapped two of his former girlfriends but was not guilty of any of the offences alleged against him.

“I would not abuse anybody, it’s the Gospel truth,” he said.

Jackson denied hitting one woman on the head with a pool cue, stabbing her in the thigh for giving her sister more potatoes than him, throttling her with a phone flex and pushing her into a glass cabinet.

He said he had never raped anyone.

“I am born again, I am born again twice over,” he told the jury.

Jackson said he had suffered memory loss since he received a head injury when he was attacked with a pickaxe handle by a former girlfriend’s brothers. He told the jury he spent a year in hospital and time in a care home and at Lynfield Mount Hospital in Heaton with mental health problems.

Jackson said he had no recollection of two of his alleged victims but would not have sexually molested a man because “I love women”.

He told the jury he was sexually abused when he was a boy and witnessed violence in his childhood home.

He conceded he had convictions for punching a woman in the face and headbutting another woman and punching and kicking her.

Jackson agreed with prosecution barrister Mark McKone that he had strong religious beliefs. He said the women had told wicked lies about him because he had turned to God.

Jackson said he was a strong man in his younger days and had taken up martial arts.

The trial continues.