It is a matter of public record that Mrs Margaret Cathcart-Bryce, a wealthy, long-standing church member, donated substantial funds to the church while alive to renovate Chapman Farm, and that when she died in 2004, the Council of Principals was the sole beneficiary of her will, enabling the church to purchase suitable properties in central London, Birmingham and Glasgow, for congregants to meet.
Your blog post contains several outright falsehoods. Chapman Farm contains neither a jacuzzi nor a swimming pool, and Mr Jonathan Wace does not own, nor has he ever owned, property in Antigua. All cars owned by the Church Principals were bought out of their own salaries. Your assertion that church members are required to collect one hundred pounds per day, or they will face the ‘wrath’ of Mr Taio Wace, is likewise wholly false.
The Church is open and transparent in all its financial dealings. No monies collected for charitable purposes were ever used to maintain or renovate Chapman Farm, or to purchase or upgrade the UHC headquarters in London, or to personally benefit the Principals in any way. Again, the suggestion that the UHC or its Council of Principals is ‘venal’, ‘duplicitous’ and ‘vain’ is highly defamatory both of the Church and its Council, and likely to cause serious reputational damage. This increases your liability.
Blog Post of 23 February 2013: ‘The Drowned Prophet’
On 23 February 2013, you published a post titled ‘The Drowned Prophet’, in which you made a series of defamatory and deeply hurtful assertions about the death by drowning in 1995 of Mr and Mrs Wace’s firstborn child, Daiyu, who is considered a prophet within the UHC.
The assertions and insinuations contained within this paragraph could hardly be more offensive, hurtful, or defamatory of Mr and Mrs Wace, or of the UHC as a whole.
The suggestion that Mrs Wace ‘milks’ or ‘exploits’ the tragic death of her young daughter is a vile slur and highly defamatory of Mrs Wace, both as a mother and as a Principal of the church.
Moreover, a reasonable reader is likely to conclude from your use of the phrase ‘strange coincidence’, when referring to the accidental drowning of Mrs Jennifer Wace, that there is something suspect, either about Mrs Jennifer Wace’s death, or about the fact that Daiyu Wace met her end in a tragically similar fashion.
The True Position
On 29 July 1995, 7-year-old Daiyu Wace drowned in the sea off Cromer beach. As is a matter of public record, and easily discoverable through court records and press coverage of the inquest into her death, Daiyu was taken to the beach in the early morning by a church member who hadn’t asked permission from Daiyu’s parents. Mr and Mrs Wace were devastated to hear their daughter had drowned while swimming unattended.
It is part of the belief system of the UHC that some deceased members of the church become ‘prophets’ after death. Religious belief is protected under English law.
