A JURY has heard how a woman felt ‘violated’ by her experience with a visiting Methodist minister and ‘gaslighted’ by the church’s response after she reported his behaviour – later telling how she drove to a cliff and tried to jump.

Reverend Steven James Wild, 72, was at Truro Crown Court for the second day of his trial on 11 charges relating to alleged sexual offences against several women between 2004 and 2019.

A second complainant, who alleges Rev Wild touched her bottom at a Methodist event in near Sheffield gave evidence by video link in the afternoon and referred to the puppet frog that appeared with Rev Wild on his speaking circuit, and how she would “wonder where that frog has been”.

This morning, Recorder Richard Stead and the jury viewed video evidence, which lasted an hour and 45 minutes, of a police interview recorded in May 2022 with the first complainant, who was giving her account of several encounters with Mr Wild from 2004. These included Rev Wild’s visit to her church more than two decades ago, a congregational day trip, and a Methodist forum in Torquay.

The court heard the complainant describe how Rev Wild had visited her fellowship in Cornwall, where services were being held in a church hall. In the recorded interview, during which she often appeared visibly uncomfortable, she told the police officer: “He shook my hand and kept hold of it for what felt like ages.”

Asked what she did, she replied: “I just froze. It wasn’t normal. I’m used to how people at church shake your hand and let go. They don’t keep holding your hand. Even my friends don’t do that. I was uncomfortable from the word go with him.”

At the end of the service, the complainant claimed Rev Wild gathered people round in a circle to say blessings and grace, and encouraged them to put an arm around the person next to them. The complainant recalled being on one side of a man she knew, with Rev Wild on the other.

“He moves his arm down so his arm is holding me and not [the man] anymore,” she said. “Rather than engaging in final prayers, he was leaning back and peering round [the man] and staring at me, which he was not supposed to be doing. I couldn’t move my arm away because he was pressing it against [the man’s] back.”

Once the service had ended, the complainant described “backing off into a corner, thinking ‘don’t come near me’.” She described how Rev Wild “approached me, and said ‘come here’ – he held his arms out. I didn’t move … he came into the corner to me, put his arms around me and held me tightly.”

She continued: “He’s got his face pressed against mine … he kept saying ‘oh love’ and ‘you’re very special’, and making noises … sort of groaning noises and moaning. If I was to write them down, they would be lots of ms, like ‘mmmmm’.”

Moving on, she said: “He started kissing my left cheek, multiple times, not just a peck on the cheek. He was doing that for a while. Then he stopped doing that and was facing me directly – our foreheads were almost touching but not quite. I couldn’t focus on his face, he was so close.” She added: “I was panicking rather a lot at this point.”

She told the police officer: “I was scared, of what he was doing and of what he might do. I was feeling violated, like my space was being invaded. I’d done nothing to ask for this - if anything, I had tried to move myself away.”

She claimed the encounter was interrupted when a fellow congregation member approached Rev Wild and engaged him in conversation. “I packed my stuff and I was ready to get out of there.” The complainant waited until someone else exited the hall with Rev Wild, then “I went home and burst into tears.” She added: “I wrote down what had happened.”

The next day, she met counsellor and Methodist Minister Stephen Williams at a pre-arranged meeting at his home in Bodmin, and told him what had happened. “He spent a few weeks just fobbing me off,” she said. It was all this ‘I wouldn’t do that, he’s not like that, he’s a man of God. There was all this ‘do not tell anyone else, do not tell your mates at work,’ all this about ‘spiritual warfare – you’re doing Satan’s work if you tell them, because you’re spreading lies about the church.”

Instead, she claimed Rev Williams arranged for her to meet Rev Wild, “for me to tell him what he’d done and how I felt … and [Rev Wild] turned around and said he didn’t remember things or it wasn’t like that. He dismissed it, basically.”

The following year, the complainant attended a day trip organised by the Cornwall Methodist Church, unaware that Rev Wild would be present. During that trip, she found herself alone with him in a chapel, “just the two of us – he got both arms around me and I’m stuck in a pew, not able to escape … he was making the same sort of noises as he was after the service the last time, and starts kissing me again on the cheek.

“At this point I started crying. I was scared of him and what he was doing. You realise you’re on your own in a building with him – I should have stayed outside.” She added: “I was shaking and crying – there was no doubt he knew I didn’t want this.” Again, she claimed the alleged incident was interrupted by the arrival of a third party.

She claimed later, while feeling sick, she was approached again by Rev Wild, who was circulating with “left-over food”. His arm was around me ...almost around my waist then my back, and over the waistband of my trousers. He said, ‘are you sure I can’t tempt you with anything?’ I didn’t care if it was innuendo or not. I said not unless you want to see it again. With that he moved off.”

The complainant said that on her return, she had phoned an acquaintance to tell her what had happened. “I basically got an earful from her. ‘You can’t say things like that about him. He’s wonderful.’ No one was listening.”

The complainant claimed she saw Rev Wild again at a Methodist conference in Torquay and felt “these arms around me” and him saying “hello, love.” This was the last time she saw the defendant.

Following the video, the complainant attended court in person for cross-examination, appearing behind a screen a with an intermediary due to health reasons.

Speaking for the defence, Heather Hope confirmed that she would refer to Rev Wild as “my client”, having been asked by the complainant not to use his name. Regarding the alleged incident in the church hall, she asked the complainant: “From your position, it goes without saying you could not see his other arm, or anyone else’s arms, where they were? The complainant responded: “No.”

Ms Hope continued: “You didn’t at any point do anything to draw attention to anything you were concerned about?” The complainant replied: “Not at that point, no.”

She established that the complainant had been seeing Rev Williams for counselling on a regular basis, and that he had arranged for the complainant to meet Rev Wild. “He said it was the first step of the process – that was what I had to do,” she said.

“At that meeting, my client became upset when you said he made you feel uncomfortable in the way in which he had been around you,” said Ms Hope. “Do you agree?” The complainant replied: “I became upset; he did not.”

“Do you agree my client apologised to you?” Ms Hope continued. “No – he said he had no recollection of the event,” the complainant replied.

Regarding the second alleged encounter on the trip, Ms Hope continued: “I’m going to suggest if you were unwell, it wasn’t a situation where my client would come up to you and was in any way trying to offer you food.” The complainant responded: “He came with a tray of food, and said ‘Do you want some food?’”

Ms Hope said: “Of all the people you spoke to, the police did not feature.” The complainant replied: “I kept being told not to go to the police. I drove to a cliff and tried to jump.”

Ms Hope continued: “I’m going to suggest to you that my client did not inappropriately behave towards you.” The complainant responded, quietly: “He did.”

Speaking for the prosecution, Brian Fitzherbert established that the complainant had reported the incident to the police in 2022 after her then minister had told her that Rev Wild had been suspended. “She started with, he’s from Cornwall – do you know him? She had trained with him and was saying he had been suspended on safeguarding grounds. She couldn’t believe it – he was a wonderful man. I stuck it out for a while, then said I had reported it [more than two decades ago].

Mr Fitzherbert asked the complainant how she felt during the meeting with Rev Stephen Williams and Rev Wild a few weeks after the alleged incident at her church. “He told you you had no proof. I want to ask of that moment, how you felt when he said those things?”

“Upset – gaslighted,” the complainant replied. “I had the overwhelming feeling that he was lying and knew exactly what he had done.”

In the afternoon, Rev Stephen Williams took the stand. Mr Fitzherbert established that he had met Rev Wild when they studied together at Wesley College, Bristol in the early 1980s. In 2001, Rev Williams was appointed as a Methodist minister on the Bodmin circuit. He was also a qualified counsellor, and acknowledged that he had been seeing the complainant regularly in this capacity, but that his notes regarding their meetings had been destroyed in house moves.

He agreed that the complainant had told him about the alleged incident at her church, and that she seemed “upset” by what she described to him as “Steven Wild had impinged upon her personal boundaries and made her feel uncomfortable and he touched her in some way.”

At a subsequent meeting between the complainant and Rev Wild in the presence of Rev Williams, and in his home office, the latter said Rev Wild “appeared to be shocked by what she said and remorseful, and he apologised to her”.

Ms Hope asked Rev Williams if he had told the complainant “she had to attend such a meeting”. He replied: “No.”

Ms Hope asked: “Did the complainant discuss with you reporting that she had told you to the police?” He replied: “I don’t recall her mentioning that.”

“Did you do anything to try and prevent her from taking any steps she wanted to report it to the police?” Again he replied: “No.”

Regarding a reference to “Satan’s work” the complainant attributed to Rev Williams, he said: “I do not recall saying that at all. That’s not the kind of thing I would say – it’s not my style.”

He added under questioning that after the meeting, the complainant had come to him asking for contact details for Rev Wild. “She said she wasn’t convinced by his apology and how she should make contact with him again … I said she could write a letter and that might open up communication between them.”

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In the afternoon, jurors heard from the second complainant and her husband give evidence by video link, about an interaction that took place in the region in 2005 when the complainant was training in Methodist ministry.

The pair attended a church event near Sheffield. The second complainant told Mr Fitzherbert how, when Rev Wild arrived, he was “very excited, talking about Jesus, how good the event had been and how good it was to see people together. He was very animated.”

She continued: “He wanted to hug me, which I didn’t think of a problem. But when his arms went around me, they went down my back and underneath my bottom. I just kind of froze – I couldn’t believe it really. Then it was over.” Asked how long it took, she replied: “Around five seconds … long enough for me to think, ‘oh my life, what’s happening here?’”

The second complainant said she returned to her husband and told him what had happened. She said Rev Wild “often had this frog puppet called Clarence – I can remember saying, I wonder where that frog has been? We would speak of it at an event if he was there, about where his hands had been and whether he’d got that frog to hide where his hands are going.”

She added: “Over the years, and since reading it in the papers, I have felt guilty about making light of it … I feel guilty about not saying anything at the time.”

Cross-examining for the defence, Heather Hope said: “While Steven Wild may have hugged you and it’s possible his hands moved down your back, I’m going to suggest his hands did not cup your buttocks.” The second complainant replied: “Yes, he did.”

“I think we can agree that at no stage did you say anything to anyone else about the event?” asked Ms Hope. “Just my husband,” the complainant replied, adding: “I didn’t think anyone would believe me at all.”

Ms Hope also asked the second complainant if she had been in contact with another complainant due to appear in the trial. The complainant confirmed she had, and was aware of an allegation made against Steven Wild by that woman, but not the nature of the allegation.

The second complainant was followed on the video link by her husband. Asked by the prosecuting counsel what his wife had said to him upon her return from meeting Rev Wild, he answered: “Something along the lines of ‘The dirty b******d just felt my arse!’”

In defence, Ms Hope asked: “Would you explain, with that stance and other people in the way, what you could see was the top of them? Heads and shoulders?” The witness replied: “Down to the middle – I saw his arms go over the top of her and pull her towards him in the action of a hug.”

The trial continues.