Yorkshire Roman Catholic priest in historic rape trial told ‘may God forgive you’ by alleged victim

John Anthony Clohosey, 72, claims he had consensual sexual relations with the alleged victim but did not have full intercourse 

A Roman Catholic priest accused of raping a woman 35 years ago was told ‘may God forgive you, you are a liar and a rapist’ by the woman in court.

Retired John Anthony Clohosey, 72, who presided over churches across North East England, denies rape but said he did ask the alleged victim for sex when he visited her home in 1986.

The North Yorkshire man, from Filey, told detectives they kissed and cuddled in her bedroom but did not have intercourse because he was unable to perform.

Newcastle Crown Court heard how the complainant, who cannot be identified, asked the Diocese of Hexham and Newcastle for help to pay a legal bill and grew angry when she was turned down, and said in an email she had been abused by a serving priest decades earlier.

The jury were shown a video of her interview with police in which she claimed Mr Clohosey visited her home in Tyneside in 1986 and after an awkward conversation asked her to have sex with him, before raping her when she refused.

Robin Patton, defending, suggested the sexual encounter had been consensual, and that the priest visited her again a few weeks later.

She replied: ‘That is a lie, that simply didn’t happen.’

Addressing the defendant, she became upset as she said: ‘May God forgive you, you are a liar as well as a rapist.

‘If you can stand there with a Bible in your hands, the book you are supposed to live your life by, to save your skin, may God forgive you.’

The alleged victim said she approached the diocese for a loan to help her with a financial problem.

She told the court: ‘There was nothing sordid or underhand about it, I asked and they said no.’

It was then that she said in an email to her priest – not the defendant – that she had been abused, and was later to tell the diocese safeguarding team and the police more details about what allegedly happened, the court heard.

She explained to the jury how she named Mr Clohosey having not mentioned it to anyone for more than 30 years.

She had been reluctant to report the complaint which she had shut in a box in her mind, but once she came forward, she could ‘barely think of anything else’, the court heard.

She told the jury: ‘The lid would not go back on the box, as much as I tried.’

She denied she was being ‘dishonest’ in making the allegation, saying: ‘I have nothing to gain and nothing to lose, for me standing here, telling my story, my journey.

Mr Clohosey, of St Mary’s Priory (pictured), denies having raped a woman in her home in 1986

‘There are no winners, just two losers.’

The woman told police and the court that Clohosey wrote to her in 1986, after he moved parishes, asking to visit her.

Describing him arriving at her home, she said: ‘Immediately I was uneasy about the situation.’

She claimed that ‘out of the blue’ he said: ‘I wonder if you could help me out – will you have sex with me?’

The woman claimed she repeatedly told the priest ‘no’ but he ‘pushed me on the shoulder and caught me off guard immediately’. 

It was then, she claimed to the jury, that Father Clohosey raped her in a bedroom.

She said when he left ‘he was quite calm, he wasn’t flustered, he wasn’t panicked’ and reportedly told her ‘Goodnight, God bless’.

Mr Clohosey denies the rape charge.  

The trial continues.