Therapist guilty of sex charges

A hypnotherapist who told young girls to strip during "spiritual" massages has been convicted of sex offences.

Peter Knight, 75, of Selsey Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham, set himself up as a healer specialising in positive thinking in the late 1980s.

The city's crown court heard he abused young women and girls over a 10 years, telling them he was healing them.

He was found guilty of 16 counts of indecent assault and three counts of indecency and told he faces jail.

The trial was told Knight, who also offered tarot card reading, groped an 11-year-old girl.

Now an adult, she told the trial he had being giving her a massage in a candle-lit treatment room when the attack happened.

She said he told her it would help her to "move forward" with her life.

Knight was granted conditional bail pending the preparation of probation reports.

But Judge William Davis QC told him: "This is a case in which there is every chance that you will be going to prison, whatever the outcome of the reports."