Christian preacher arrested for saying ‘God bless you’ to protesters

A Christian street preacher arrested for saying ‘God bless you’ to protesters at a Palestinian demonstration claims that police are trying to gag his freedom of speech after arresting him 16 times.

Shaun O’Sullivan, 36, preaches at Swindon’s evangelical ‘Awaken’ church and on the streets to homeless and addicts on the fringe of society, as he once was. He says he plans to sue Wiltshire Police after being cleared of racial harassment following a six-day trial in Crown Court, at an estimated cost of £20,000 at the taxpayer’s expense.

Despite his remarkable tally of arrests, none of the charges or cases brought against him have stuck, and a jury unanimously threw out the latest case of racial and religious harassment against him in just 90 minutes (which included their lunchtime break). Those proceedings followed an allegation that he was guilty of harassing Muslims by saying the words: ‘Pray for the Jews and pray for the Palestinians’ in relation to the Gaza conflict.

On a separate occasion, he was arrested after it was alleged that his ‘God bless you’ comment had offended Muslims at a pro-Palestinian march. In a remarkable clip which he recorded and posted on TikTok, he can be heard speaking to a female police officer who confirms repeatedly that saying ‘God Bless You’ is indeed a crime ‘If it causes distress’, and observes that ‘if that person was a Muslim’ they might be distressed.

In fact, Section 5 of the Public Order Act says a person commits an offence if they use ‘threatening or abusive words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour…within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.’ Why Muslims (who believe, in common with Jews and Christians) that there is only one God, would be likely to be offended by someone offering his blessing upon them is anyone’s guess. No doubt because of that officer’s fundamental misunderstanding of the law, the case was eventually dropped.

Mr O’Sullivan told the Daily Mail: ‘The police have a vendetta against me – I’ve been told as much by individual officers who have said if someone complains about me I’ll be arrested. I’m glad that the jury were able to see sense and almost immediately dismiss the nonsense that the police and prosecution said about me.

I’m not racist and I have no problem with people disagreeing with my religious views, but I do have a right to state them because we have freedom of speech in this country – even if it does offend people. That’s why, despite Wiltshire Police arresting me 16 times, I have always been cleared. But now I’m going to sue them because the harassment from them has turned into a witch-hunt and it’s just too much.’

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