A FORMER Bishop of Durham, the Rt Revd Paul Butler, is among the many clergy who’ve been asked to “step back” from ministry while safeguarding reviews prompted by the Makin review are conducted, it was confirmed this week.
The Makin review concluded that John Smyth’s abuse became an “open secret amongst an entire variety of individuals connected with the Conservative Evangelical network” (News, 7 November). The individuals named within the report, running into dozens, range from those that actively covered up the abuse within the Eighties to those that learned of it previously decade, after survivors made disclosures to the diocese of Ely.
On Sunday, the Bishop of Newcastle, Dr Helen Ann Hartley, wrote on social media: “It’s clear from the 100s of emails I proceed to receive that there’s a crisis of trust within the episcopate (not surprising, and never latest). Makin have to be a watershed and all (all) named within the Review must step back from public ministry now pending independent investigations.”
During the compiling of his review, which began in 2019, Mr Makin passed on concerns to the National Safeguarding Team (NST), along with the police and other authorities. Since then, some clergy have already been subject to safeguarding reviews. They include Lord Carey, whose permission to officiate (PTO) was withdrawn in 2020. Since it was restored in 2021, he has maintained that he “respectfully disagrees” with the NST’s conclusion that he had seen a report about Smyth’s abuse (News, 29 January 2021).
In 2021, a “core group” (formed to administer every safeguarding concern or allegation involving a church officer) considered the involvement of the Bishop of Lincoln, the Rt Revd Stephen Conway, formerly Bishop of Ely. It concluded that his response to disclosures was “consistent with safeguarding culture and practice on the time”, and really useful no further motion. Another core group, considering a grievance against the Archbishop of Canterbury in 2021, concluded that he had “acted inside the policies in place inside the Church of England on the time” and had “no case to reply”.
In the wake of publication of the Makin review, the NST is now considering, together with relevant dioceses, if there’s “any immediate safeguarding risk” posed by church officers, and if there’s evidence to support any disciplinary processes. In the summer, it commissioned an independent external barrister to create a “threshold document” to use to all individuals criticised within the Makin review, to see if motion under the Clergy Discipline Measure is warranted.
In the mean time, dioceses are taking decisions concerning the ministry of clergy named within the Makin review (News, 15 November; 22 November). Bishop Butler’s connection pertains to his time as president of the Scripture Union (SU) (2011 to 2017). During this time, the Revd Tim Hastie-Smith was the SU’s national director.
The SU didn’t run the camps organised by the Iwerne Trust (chaired for a time by Smyth, who also served as a camp leader), but employed three of the staff at Iwerne, and supported its operations. Smyth was also an SU trustee. The general director of the SU (1978-86), Alan Martin, was informed by the Iwerne Trust about Smyth’s abuse in 1982, and said that Smyth would receive “no comfort” from the SU, and that he would tell him to hunt “skilled help”. Mr Martin died in 2011.
The activities of the Iwerne Trust were absorbed into the Titus Trust in 2000. Records show that Mr Hastie-Smith was informed by the Titus Trust about “non-recent abuse disclosures” in 2014.
A 2021 independent review of SU links to Smyth’s abuse describes Mr Hastie-Smith as “immersed in each the Iwerne Trust and University peer circles impacted by Smyth’s influence (News, 26 March 2021)”. It says: “He had been involved with Iwerne camps for a few years (before joining SU) and, due to this fact, knew lots of the people involved in them at a private level; he was aware of the identity of an anonymous alleged victim who has spoken publicly concerning the Smyth matter; quite a lot of his peers at Cambridge University were victims and survivors, and he had been certainly one of David Fletcher’s curates at St Ebbe’s, Oxford.” It says that this conflict of interest must have been declared earlier (it was declared in 2017).
Explaining a lack of awareness before 2014, Mr Hastie-Smith told the review that he will need to have either been “grotesquely insensitive” or “extraordinarily incurious”. The review’s chief criticism of the SU response after 2014 concerns “failures to confirm with the police what information had been shared and a demonstrated trust in and deference to Titus Trust leadership, who gave assurances that every one appropriate motion had been taken”.
The SU’s own records indicate that, in 2015, Mr Hastie-Smith informed the Board that he had spoken directly with Bishop Butler concerning the matter. At the time, he had seen the 1982 Ruston report describng Smyth’s abuse. The review says that “Bishop Paul was reportedly advocating an inquiry,” but that there isn’t any record of this meeting.
Bishop Butler told the Makin review that he did speak with Mr Hastie-Smith, but he was not supplied with any detailed information concerning the abuse, and was not shown any reports on the time. He described his position on the SU as “advisory and never managerial”. At the time, he was also lead safeguarding bishop for the Church of England.
On Monday, a spokesman for the diocese of Southwell & Nottingham confirmed that Bishop Butler, now retired, with PTO within the diocese, had been “asked to step back from all ministry at the moment while the National Safeguarding Team is undertaking an investigation into those named within the Makin review”.
Since 2008, Mr Hastie-Smith has been a Team Vicar within the South Cotswolds Team Ministry. On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the diocese of Gloucester said that a safeguarding review conducted within the wake of publication of the Makin report, had been accomplished for Mr Hastie Smith, “and the choice has been made that he’s in a position to proceed ministry”.
She said that the review process for the Rector of St Matthew’s and the Minster, Cheltenham, the Revd Richard Coombs, was “still in progress, but has not identified a necessity for him to step back from ministry at the moment”. The Makin review says: “According to the Revd Christopher Davis, a victim approached [the] Reverend Richard Coombs in March 1989.”
At the time of going to press, the diocese of Bath & Wells had not responded to a request for clarification concerning the status of Mr Davis, now Rector of Wulfric Benefice, who told the Makin review that he had been told by the Revd Jonathan Fletcher that “the victims didn’t want any motion taken.”
During Mr Hastie-Smith’s curacy at St Ebbe’s, Oxford, the Rector was the Revd David Fletcher, identified within the Makin review as at the center of the cover-up. Mr Hastie-Smith’s predecessor was the Revd Vaughan Roberts, who told the Makin review that he was unaware of the seriousness of Smyth’s abuse until 2017.
A spokesman for the diocese of Oxford said on Tuesday: “Although the Revd Vaughan Roberts is mentioned within the Makin review, he shouldn’t be specifically criticised by the reviewer. We have reviewed the data and don’t consider further motion is vital.”
In the diocese of Chichester, Canon Andrew Cornes, who retired in 2015, retains PTO, a spokeswoman confirmed last week. The Makin review records that, in 1982, a victim discussed the abuse with him. There isn’t any evidence that he took motion to reply to this. He told the review that he thought that the matter was being handled. He is a member of the Crown Nominations Commission and the General Synod.
Many of Smyth’s victims were pupils at Winchester College, where, from 1975, he made regular visits to talk on the Christian Forum. The forum was led from 1972 by Prebendary John Woolmer, assistant chaplain at the school from 1972 to 1975. The Makin review reports that he became concerned about Smyth’s influence.
Prebendary Woolmer became a curate of St Aldate’s, Oxford, in 1975, and was approached by a student at Oxford in either late 1981 or early 1982 to say that he was anxious about something “very serious”, which involved abuse. The Makin review says: “John Woolmer didn’t pursue this and has reported to Reviewers that he has regretted that since. . . He has stressed to reviewers that he was told of this under a strict understanding that he must not pass this on. He considered himself to be under the ‘seal of the confessional’, which he wouldn’t break and that he understood the report back to be about corporal punishment of the kind that was still apparent on the time.”
The Makin review says that the Revd Michael Green, Rector of St Aldate’s from 1975 to 1982, was told about Smyth’s abuse in 1982 “by a curate from Winchester College but was sworn to secrecy”. In an appendix to the review, Prebendary Woolmer writes: “I deeply regret not breaking the ‘seal of the confessional’ but I doubt it could have made much difference.”
Prebendary Woolmer retired in 2007, and had held PTO within the diocese of Leicester since 2015. Last week, an announcement from the diocese of Leicester said that the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt Revd Martyn Snow, had removed Prebendary Woolmer’s PTO in 2022, throughout the compiling of the Makin review, “whilst an in depth piece of labor was undertaken by the diocesan safeguarding team. John cooperated with that work and his PTO was subsequently restored.
“Since then, John has exercised a really limited ministry of preaching and teaching in his local church and was supervised repeatedly by his local incumbent together with his PTO reviewed on an annual basis.”
After the publication of the Makin review, “and in view of the method now being undertaken by the National Safeguarding Team”, Bishop Snow had “requested that John steps back from ministry whilst this work is conducted, which John has voluntarily agreed to do”. His PTO can be reviewed again, “once the National Safeguarding Team and the Diocesan Safeguarding Team have concluded their work”.
Writing on social media last week, one Smyth survivor, Graham, wrote: “I cannot speak for all victims, but John Woolmer is certainly one of the nice guys. He wrote to victims in 2017, a heart-rending mea culpa. We forgave him immediately. . . Victims don’t want ‘revenge’, we wish full disclosure, and honest, credible, apology. Woolmer is man.”
In 2021, the Archbishop of Canterbury said: “I even have made it clear that the National Safeguarding Team will investigate every clergy person or others inside their scope of whom they’ve been informed who knew and didn’t disclose the abuse” (News, 21 May 2021). This commitment was also made to survivors, with the Archbishop saying that a listing held up by one survivor would act as the idea for investigations.
The Makin review records that “this shouldn’t be what then happened,” and that victims felt that a promise had been broken. “The investigations being undertaken were with a purpose to establish whether an ordained person was presenting a current safeguarding risk.”
