Bartholomew's Notes

The Daily Mail has a long interview with Caroline Green, ex-wife of Stephen Green of Christian Voice, who has accused him of abusive and controlling behaviour:

Caroline Green was often punished by her husband Stephen for failing to be a dutiful, compliant wife, but his final act of violence against her — the one that prompted her long-overdue decision to divorce him — was all the more chilling because it was coldly premeditated.

Stephen Green wrote a list of his wife’s ­failings then described the weapon he would make to beat her with.

‘He told me he’d make a piece of wood into a sort of witch’s broom and hit me with it, which he did,’ she recalls, her voice tentative and quiet. ‘He hit me until I bled. I was terrified. I can still remember the pain…’

According to her account, when she married Green he was “not remotely religious”. However:

Their wedding provided his first entrée into the religious world that now immerses him. He joined the choir, then the Parochial Church Council, then began to get involved with political groups. He became a vociferous member of the anti-abortion campaign Society For The ­Protection Of The Unborn Child, and joined the Conservative Family Campaign.

…But Green’s views were already becoming extreme. In 1992 he wrote a virulently anti-gay book, The ­Sexual Dead End, which Caroline says marked ‘the beginning of the end’. Two years later, he abandoned the Conservative Family Campaign, which he regarded as too moderate, and set up Christian Voice in order to pursue a more radical course.

Then, in 1997, when their children were 16, 14, 12 and ten, the family moved from the Home Counties to a remote small-holding in ­Carmarthenshire, west Wales.

Green’s activism has featured on this blog a number of times (for example, here and here). Details about The Sexual Dead End are scarce, although according to the British Library catalogue entry it runs to 482 pages plus 12 pages of photos. Somewhat inappropriately, the publisher was a company called Broadview: Amazon identifies this as the Broadview Press in Canada, which seems somewhat unlikely (alternative sources give a PO Box in London). According to Third Way, “it contains a good deal of information, some useful, some appalling. Best handled like blood from a Hapatitis B patient”, although Radical and Right was more enthusiastic:

The Sexual Dead-End’ is essential reading for every conservative and Nationalist as well as every Christian and every parent of young children… Green makes the case that there is no demarcation line between male homosexual activity amongst adults and the pursuit of ever-younger boys. Not all homosexuals seek sexual relationships with pre-teen boys, not all homosexuals are insatiably promiscuous and not all are driven to extremes of sado-masochistic rituals, but those that are not are on the fringes of the movement. The activists demand no limits on their appetites and their appetites are unlimited…

In 2009, Green called for gay people and adulterers to be executed, and commended efforts in this direction being made in Uganda.

Caroline gives an account of Green’s increasing extremism:

Caroline describes his state of mind at this stage as ‘hyper-manic’. She says: For years he’d been ­controlling, spiteful and self-righteous. But later he became delusional and completely uncontrollable.

This fits with Green’s character as observed on television. In 2008 I wrote a blog entry about a documentary in which he featured; I noted that

He comes across as rather unbalanced: one minute he is chatting and joking with the documentary-maker, the next moment he becomes aggressive, forcing away the camera and complaining about “persecution”. In one particularly bathetic moment in Brighton, just as he offers up a prayer a seagull leaves a prominent dropping on the front of his shirt; Green is not amused, and he demands that the documentary-maker not make fun of him – perhaps the fact that certain internet scoffers insist on nicknaming him “Stephen ‘Dog Shit’ Green” after he compared Jerry Springer to treading in dog excrement meant that this touched a raw nerve.

According to the Mail, “When invited to respond to his ex-wife’s allegations, Stephen Green made no comment.”

(H/T Harry’s Place)

UPDATE: John Walker’s Electronic House has an overview of Green’s close relationship with the Mail over the past two years:

The paper has been seeking comment from Green on every matter they can think of ever since his prominence in 2005. But today it’s all entirely forgotten.

Meanwhile, David T has an interesting account in the Harry’s Place comments of a meeting with Green:

Years ago – in the late 80s in fact – I organised a debate at which Stephen Green was one of the speakers. I have a feeling that the other was Peter Tatchell, although I can’t be entirely sure!

Stephen Green struck me as a very strange man, lacking in ordinary social abilities. I did not warm to him on a personal level. This wasn’t to do with his politics – you quite often meet people whose politics you disagree with strongly who you oppose on a range of fundamental issues, but who are still absolutely delightful on a personal level…

Christians need not feel defensive in any way about Stephen Green. As with so many of these types, his religious and political conduct appears to be an expression of some very personal failings.

UPDATE 2: Green has responded with denials and an allegation of his own:

I never once had sexual relations with my former wife against her clearly expressed wish.  Secondly, in connection with the published allegations that I assaulted her, the truth, sadly, is the complete opposite.  I had to obtain a harassment order against her to stop a campaign of intimidation and on one of the occasions when she assaulted me, I reported the matter to the police and she received a police caution.

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