A ZIMBABWEAN church leader who called himself "The Prophet" has been convicted of molesting members of his own flock in Scotland.

Walter Masocha, founder and Archbishop of the Stirling-based Agape for All Nations Church, was found guilty of sexual assault following a trial.

The 51-year-old was convicted of putting his hand down a schoolgirl's trousers, claiming he was driving away demons, and groping a deaconess while praying for her stomach complaint.

Both women were targeted at Masocha's £500,000 seven-bedroom mansion, Coseyneuk House, near Stirling, where the Zimbabwe-born churchman regularly received followers.

During a six-day trial at Falkirk Sheriff Court, the 15-year-old girl said many in the church regarded Masocha as their "spiritual father" and called him "Dad".

She said that in late 2013, she had been in a games room at Coseyneuk House when the church leader had repeatedly "pinged" her underwear and grabbed and pinched her bottom.

When she later asked Masocha why he had done it, he told her that he had seen "demons and things that shouldn't be there" in her pants, and that he was clearing them away.

Giving evidence by video link, she said she had been wearing “stretchy trousers”.

She said: “He waved me over. He placed his hand round my lower back, and moved his hand down until he got to my underwear, and he sort of pinged my underwear.

He repeatedly pinged my underwear, ran his hand down my bottom, and grabbed and pinched my bottom.

“I just broke into tears because I thought I had been doing things wrong without realising. I felt like I had been bad.”

'Anointed hugs'

The deaconess, a 32-year-old mother-of-four, had visited Masocha's office for prayer while suffering from a stomach complaint, when he started touching her private parts.

She said: "I was so shocked. At that time I saw him as somebody who could never do any wrong, because that was what he used to teach us.

“He used to teach us his hugs were anointed."

When she told her husband, a devoted member of the church, he told her: "The Prophet is seeing something in your genitals that needs to be removed, so he was removing that."

She left her husband and the church shortly after members had tried to have her sectioned under the Mental Health Act.