Fundamentalist Christian was wife-beater

Summary of story from the Daily Mail, 28.1.11

Stephen Green, founder and co-director of UK fundamentalist group Christian Voice, (which he himself set up in 1994), likes to complain that “virtue is derided”.

But it turns out that nowhere was it more derided than in Green’s own home where he regularly beat his wife and used his own children as child labour.

Now his wife of 26 years has left him, the truth is finally emerging.

She likened life with him to living in a cult in which she and their four children were ‘all subjugated to his will and cowed by him. Over the years he belittled us and made us feel worthless.’

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.

‘Stephen listed my misdemeanours: I was disrespectful and disobedient; I wasn’t loving or submissive enough and I was undermining him. He also said I wasn’t giving him his conjugal rights.

‘He even framed our marriage vows — he always put particular emphasis on my promise to obey him — and hung them over our bed.

‘He believed there was no such thing as marital rape and for years I’d been reluctant to have sex with him, but he said it was my duty and was angry if I refused him.

‘But the beating was the last straw. It convinced me I had to divorce him.’