Archbishop of Cant

Archbishop Justin Welby has just announced that he is resigning for failing to bring the abusive Church of England lay reader John Smyth to justice. And it is about time too, for the stench of hypocrisy that emanates from Welby (and the self-righteous Smyth too) is worse than old sewage. Welby, who has thundered against the historical injustices of slavery and colonialism, and what he regards as the injustices of Brexit and the Rwanda scheme, was simultaneously perpetrating his own monstrous injustice against Smyth’s victims. How despicable. How repugnant. How vile.

Disgracefully, it was not the Church of England that set the proverbial ball rolling on this scandal, but a Channel Four documentary way back in 2017. The presenter, Kathy Newman, not normally associated with being an advocate for men and boys, has done an admirable job of keeping the news of the abuse alive in the MSM and reported on it again on 7 November. She and a Channel Four camera crew confronted Smyth in person about his sick predilection for flagellation when he was staying with friends in Bristol. Immediately in response to the documentary, Welby apologised, but it took the church another two years to initiate an investigation.

That investigation, led by Keith Makin – a former director of social services, was due to be published in 2022, but further evidence became known of Smyth’s cruelties and so it was delayed until that evidence had been processed. It has now just recently been published. The full report of 248 pages can be found here. Be warned: it is unpleasant reading. What follows are the salient points from the report, with the section references for where in the report the information comes provided in brackets.

According to the report, John Smyth conducted his insane beatings of boys and young men under the cover of being the chair of the C of E associated Iwerne Trust, which ran Christian summer holiday camps for boys from English public schools. He did not commit the abuse at the camps but selected from the boys and young men attending them to be discipled by himself, and groomed them during hikes, sailing and skiing (9.1.5). Those who responded to Smyth’s invitation to be discipled by him were then abused in rented premises near the Iwerne Camps at Clayesmore School, Iwerne Minster and on trips to Cornwall (11.1.2.l).

Smyth’s motivation for his abuse has been analysed by Dr Elly Hanson, an independent clinical psychologist, whose conclusions appear in the report. According to Dr Hanson, Smyth abused others to achieve sexual gratification, pleasure from inflicting pain and humiliation, and a desire to dominate others (8.6.5.b). She also discerns in him a narcissistic personality disorder, grandiosity, a lack of conscience, little or no empathy and an inability to relate to others (8.6.5.c). His sexual interest in males, she also concludes, did not preclude a sexual interest in his wife, Anne (8.6.5.e).

Smyth’s magnetic charm (8.6.5.d) and his willingness to play the role of the spiritual father in the lives of his victims meant that boys and young men were prepared to submit to his ‘discipline’ (8.6.7).  His theological justification for the canings was the heretical nonsense that his victims’ sins had to be punished (11.3), and that by beating them they would be purged of their sins. This would mean that the boys and young men could focus on God’s special calling on their lives without sin’s distraction (11.3.16). The ‘sins’ that Smyth had in mind, of course, were sexual in nature such as masturbation and gazing at girls, though pride was mentioned by Smyth’s victims as being high on Smyth’s list (11.3.36). Christianity does indeed invite people to repent of their sin, but it teaches that the punishment for sin has been borne by Jesus Christ through his substitutionary death (Matthew 26:28). It is through the process of sanctification that the Holy Spirit enables the believer to avoid falling into sin (1 Peter 1:2). John Smyth was therefore a false teacher for the sake of his sexual gratification. Truly, a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

His abuse appears not to have been on the industrial scale of someone like Jimmy Savile (though one victim is one too many) but the report suspects that there were many more victims than those verified as such so far. The report can be certain that between 26 and 30 boys and young men were caned viciously by John Smyth with another six or eight groomed but not assaulted (11.1.2.k).

After moving to Zimbabwe in August 1984, Smyth set up summer camps there and continued to indulge his perversions. Here Smyth’s abuse was more prolific. It is estimated that around eighty-five males fell victim to Smyth (13.1.1.b). Alongside beatings, Smyth enforced nudity among those attending his camps (Chronology – June 1984 to 2011).

So bad were the beatings that victims testified to being scarred and having to wear adult nappies and bandages to avoid leaking blood into their clothes and on to seats and bed sheets (11.3.51). The worst known case of abuse cited in the report is the 700 to 800 lashes administered to a boy not named in the report between 10am and 10pm (11.3.55). Tragically, there was an attempted suicide by one of Smyth’s victims (Chronology – 2017 to 2019).

The report concludes damningly that members of the church were aware of the abuse, including a large number of prominent people (12.1.6). Though they were and are not abusers themselves, their inaction concerning Smyth means that they aided his sadism.

It is clear that at least from 2013, Welby knew of the abuse. On 1 February 2017, a day before the Channel Four documentary was aired, Welby issued a statement and then the next day appeared on LBC radio declaring it his intention that the victims’ interests had to come first, and confirming his knowledge of the abuse since 2013 (15.1.1.f).

Smyth died of a suspected heart attack in 2018 and so there was a five-year window in which he could have been brought to justice. Yet Welby did nothing to ensure that this happened. Now with the publication of the Makin Report eleven years after Welby knew of Smyth’s sexual violence, all is laid bare to see. And what was Welby’s response this time?

In an interview with Cathy Newman, Welby again apologised for his ‘incompetence’ but stated that after having taken advice from senior people in the church, he was not going to resign. My goodness me: what audacity, what self-entitlement, what callousness runs through this man like words in a stick of Brighton rock.

What makes the situation even more ignoble is that Welby’s eventual decision to resign came not from his own initiative, but only after immense pressure was applied to him by people within the church such as the Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, who has a deserved reputation for dealing effectively with abuse allegations in her diocese. There was also immense pressure applied by the Media to resign. Was Welby hanging on in the hope of getting a knighthood? Probably.

Now that the top man in the C of E has resigned over a safeguarding failure, let us hope that this leads others who are culpable to resign also if they are still in post. Let us hope too that this will lead to a drastic and permanent improvement in the church’s safeguarding which is long overdue. Maybe now the Church will hand over the responsibility for safeguarding to people independent of the Church, and who do not give a toss whose toes they stand on to protect victims.

Peter Harris is the author of two books, The Rage Against the Light: Why Christopher Hitchens Was Wrong (2019) and Do You Believe It? A Guide to a Reasonable Christian Faith (2020).

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