SNS GroupA church pastor has been jailed for 14 years for the serial abuse of a woman and eight children.
Rev James Haram put his traumatised victims through ordeals spanning four decades.
This included the 51-year-old raping the woman. The youngsters who were preyed upon were often whacked with a wooden spoon or a rod.
Haram – who had been with the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) in Glasgow – was sentenced on Tuesday.
He had earlier been found guilty at the High Court in Glasgow of a total of 19 charges of physical and sexual abuse.
The crimes occurred between 1997 and 2020 at addresses in the city as well as Dumbarton, West Dunbartonshire and in South Ayrshire.
Judge Tom Hughes said the victims will hopefully take “comfort” that their testimonies of how they suffered were believed by jurors.
He went on to state to Haram: “During the time you were committing these offences, you were actively involved in religious practices.
“You eventually qualified as a minister with a congregation of your own.
“The congregation trusted you. They looked to you as their leader.
“While that was going on and you were doing your minister work, you were actually committing appalling offences.
“You were betraying that trust and your position as a man of the cloth.
“You should have been a role model, but, in reality, there was a darker, deeper side to you whereby you were involved in sexual and physically violent abuse.”
Haram, of Dumbarton, was put on the sex offenders list. He is also banned from approaching or contacting all the victims. Both are for an indefinite period.
Jurors heard a harrowing account of how the woman was regularly tormented.
He called her names such as “b***h”, punched walls, chucked household items around in anger and threatened to hit her with a piano stool.
He tracked where she went, checked who she was talking to and forced her to take part in religious activities.
Haram once mowed over flowers the woman had taken time to grow.
The pastor also suggested she should kill herself.
The violence escalated with Haram grabbing and choking the woman. She recalled her “whole body going limp”.
Jurors heard the Haram would pester the woman into sex while making biblical references. She was told that she had to “subject” herself to him.
The victim recalled how she would sob with “tears down her face”.
Haram said: “I want to make clear that every sexual encounter was consensual.”
His KC Brian McConnachie put to him: “The jury may have got the impression that there were many times she would give in due to you constantly badgering her.”
Haram replied: “That is not true – there were plenty of times that she said no.”
He claimed during his evidence that the woman had “many wonderful gifts”, but that she had used them to “turn against” him. He called her “incredibly convincing”.
But, the reverend did accept there were “occasional flare-ups of aggression”.
The abuse of the children was said to include carrying out “modesty checks” on girls to see what they were wearing.
He compared one to the comic book villain Harley Quinn.
Haram said: “As God is my witness, there is not an ounce in truth in that.”
Prosecutor John Macpherson put to him that one girl gave “a fairly graphic account of some savagery” of being “regularly beaten” by Haram.
He insisted this was “wholly fabricated”.
Jurors heard he flew into a rage while in a car with two of the children and claimed he would deliberately crash the vehicle, killing them all.
But, Haram told the trial: “They knew I did not mean it.”
The court heard that Haram accepted some of the minor offences, but still maintained his innocence on the more serious matters.
A total of five character references were given to Judge Hughes prior to the hearing.
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