A NEWPORT spiritualist who deceived women into taking their clothes off and performing sex acts was found guilty of 12 charges.

Karl Lang, 49, of Winchester Close, had denied 12 counts of causing women to engage in sexual activity without consent between November 2005 and September 2009.

A few minutes ago, a jury returned guilty verdicts after a five-day trial at Newport crown court.

Read more on this case later this afternoon.

YESTERDAY Newport Crown Court heard how Karl Lang had “preyed upon the vulnerability,” of women.

The spiritualist was accused of deceiving women into taking their clothes off and performing sex acts in order to contact dead relatives

Prosecutor Matthew Roberts summed up his case to the jury at Newport Crown Court yesterday.

Lang, of Winchester Close, Newport, denied 12 counts of causing women to engage in sexual activity without consent, alleged to have happened between November 2005 and September 2009 and to involve two women.

One of the women lost her father more than ten years ago and the other complainant’s grandfather had died and they both wanted to get in touch with them. The court was told Lang would tell the women that by acting more outrageously, they could go up levels in their training as mediums in order to be able to contact the spirit world.

This included sending explicit pictures and messages to Lang’s mobile phone.

Addressing the jury yesterday, Mr Roberts said: “Both women desperately wanted to contact their loved ones. The defendant preyed upon their vulnerability and gullibility. Through a series of self-invented levels, he got them to behave in a more explicit way.

“This was nothing to do with spiritualism, it was deception.”

Mr Roberts said the women were being exploited by Lang. In his summing up, defence barrister Nigel Fryatt said all Lang did was give the women training.

Re-iterating what Lang said when he took to the stand, Mr Fryatt said: “I simply instructed them in the way of the spirit world, nothing more, nothing less, nothing sexual.”