A psychic has been charged for persuading two women to strip naked at seances to enhance their spiritual powers.
The women in their 20s wanted to contact dead relatives and it was said that Karl Lang told them they "had to be naked as the spirits are naked."
They also claimed that Lang, 49, told them to send him naked pictures of themselves and to carry out sexual acts as it would boost their psychic powers, the Mirror reported.
His first victim, 27, told the jury she wanted to contact her father, who died 10 years ago.
But at their sessions she claimed Lang told her he was the "reincarnation of Jesus Christ."
Speaking via video link to avoid seeing his face, she told Newport crown court: "He reassured me what we were doing was completely normal."
"I felt uncomfortable but he said that I needed to be spiritually cleansed and to do this I had to strip naked."
"Karl said that if I ever told on him I would never be able to speak to my father. I was vulnerable and brainwashed - and he knew it," she said.
Prosecutor Matthew Roberts told the jury: "It was a cruel trick. He was a sexual fraudster and he conned them."
Lang, of Newport denies 12 charges of causing women to engage in sexual activity without consent.