A church minister is reported to have taken his own his own life after it was alleged he had been having affairs with seven churchgoers at the same time.
The Reverend Dr Iain D. Campbell, who lived on the close-knit Scottish island of Lewis, was apparently accused by his wife, Anne, of the serial infidelity shortly before he was found dead in January. He was aged 53 and had three children.
Now his widow has called on their church, the Free Church of Scotland, to expel the women for adultery.
The church is said to be investigating while the accused women are understood to be instructing lawyers to help declare their innocence.
Dr Campbell was a leading figure in the church, which has strict teachings on the sanctity of marriage and ethics of suicide.
A source told the Daily Mail: “It is said Anne was suspicious about Iain’s activities, and confronted him at the manse [a Scottish vicarage] allegedly after finding compromising emails in his computer trash files. After first taking an overdose, he hanged himself in hospital in Stornoway. He died later in Glasgow. He’s accused – posthumously – of up to seven affairs. All of them full church members. Anne is wanting all this to go in front of a church court and for them to throw them out of the church for adultery. It will cause havoc with their marriages and the entire Free Church. Even though she’s a widow people are saying Iain had a difficult home life and there’s a lot of anger towards her.”
A source close to senior church figures said: “There was never a whisper of a rumour about affairs until after he died – on such a close-knit island they would have been very difficult to keep secret. Yet Anne has supplied names of these alleged mistresses to the church. If she is right, he had been leading an extraordinary double life for years.”
The Free Church split from the modern Church of Scotland in 1843, when congregations demanded the right to elect their own pastors.