Newport spiritualist who made women perform sex acts jailed (From South Wales Argus)

Newport spiritualist who made women perform sex acts jailed

5:50pm Friday 20th July 2012 in News By Chris Wood , Reporter

A SHAMED spiritualist was jailed for two years for what a judge described as an “abuse" of his position by making “naive” women perform sex acts for him.

Judge Patrick Curran said that medium Karl Lang had an “almost hypnotic ability to make his victims overcome their inhibitions” for his own sexual gratification.

Lang, 49, of Winchester Close, Newport, was sentenced at Cardiff Crown Court today after being found guilty of 12 counts of causing two women to engage in sexual activity without consent between November 2005 and September 2009.

During a week-long trial last month, a jury heard how two grieving women - one who had lost her father, the other her grandfather - asked Lang to help them get in touch with the dead relatives.

Prosecutor Matthew Roberts described how Lang then devised a “spirit scale”, which involved the women taking their clothes off, performing sex acts for him and sending him nude, sexual photographs.

He told the women to act more and more outrageously to please the spirits and move up the scale, saying he was the reincarnation of Jesus Christ to stop them telling anyone what was happening.

The deception ended after he told one of the victims that to increase her medium powers further, he would have to touch her sexually.

Mr Roberts read victim impact statements to the court yesterday, with one of the women describing herself as “vulnerable”, saying she now feels ashamed because Lang “groomed and manipulated me by progressively bullying and brainwashing”.

Defence barrister Nigel Fryer described Lang as having “very strong Christian beliefs” and said that he will never practice as a medium again.

Judge Curran said Lang showed no remorse, adding: “However naive they may have been, they trusted you and you committed a gross breach of that trust by abusing your position as a spiritualist.”

While Lang didn’t actually touch the victims, the judge called his behaviour “persistent mental manipulation” that was “prolonged, planned and systematic, designed to become progressively more gross” for his own sexual gratification.

He was sentenced to two consecutive terms of 12 months, plus three more concurrent terms of 12 months, six concurrent terms of three months and a concurrent term of six months for the 12 offences.

Lang must serve half of a total of two years in custody.

Lang will be on a sexual offenders' register for 10 years and is also banned from practising as a medium, clairvoyant, psychic or a healer with a woman during that period.