THE former Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Revd Justin Welby, has spoken of his “deep sense of non-public failure” over the handling of abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, telling the BBC: “I do know that I let God down. I let people down.”
Speaking to Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg greater than 4 months after his resignation over the case (News, 12 November 2024), he said that, after learning of the allegations in 2013, 11 weeks after coming into post, he had not been “sufficiently pushy, in a way that I might have been a number of years later”.
Safeguarding had been “the crisis I hadn’t foreseen”, he said. “I didn’t realise how bad it was.” But, he acknowledged, “I knew enough that individuals very rarely almost never abuse once.” He had not been “curious enough”, he said.
Asked about his actions, he mentioned the principle that dioceses investigate their very own cases. He had had a message from the police saying “in no way are you to get entangled since you will contaminate our inquiry.” But, he said “I must have pestered them. . . I see that now.”
At the time, he said, he was “very focused” on the trial of Peter Ball, the previous Bishop Gloucester who was imprisoned in 2015 for offences against teenage boys and young men (News, 7 October 2015), a case that had “seemed a lot greater”.
More cases of historic abuse were coming across his desk day by day, he recalled. “It was a completely overwhelming few weeks. . . It’s a reason, not an excuse. . . One was attempting to prioritise. . . The reality is I got it incorrect. . . As Archbishop, there aren’t any excuses.”
He had resigned, he said, “out of a way of each personal responsibility for shortcomings during my time and my very own shortcomings and out of a way of institutional responsibility for the long-term revelations of cover-up and failure over a log period”. He maintained in the course of the interview that he “didn’t have a clue” about Smyth’s abuse until 2013.
The Archbishop had, he said, met survivors online and apologised. “Certainly, as I’ve met those who wanted to satisfy me, I actually have said sorry very much. And only for the avoidance of doubt: I’m utterly sorry and feel a deep sense of non-public failure, each for the victims of Smyth not being picked up sufficiently after 2017 once we knew the extent of it, and for my very own personal failures.”
Asked about his valedictory speech within the House of Lords (News, 6 December 2024), he said that he was “profoundly ashamed . . . When I believe of it, I just wince. It was entirely incorrect and fully inexcusable.” Asked what he had been pondering, he said: “I wasn’t in a superb space. I shouldn’t have done a valedictory speech in any respect.”
Much had modified within the Church’s safeguarding, he said. There were almost 60 people within the National Safeguarding Team (NST), and each parish had a safeguarding officer. He was “entirely in favour of independent safeguarding”. He had first raised the likelihood in 2016.
The “overwhelming majority” of clergy, he said, were doing a “wonderful job . . . The Church has grown over the previous couple of years.”
Asked by Ms Kuenssberg whether “we rush to guage,” he agreed. “The first query one hears on most interviews . . . is ‘Are you going to resign?’ Having been the item of that query, it’s a really difficult one to reply, because you’re thinking that ‘Am I letting people down? Is it the suitable thing to do?’ It’s an advanced query.”
He also spoke of the “immense distrust of institutions” and “an absence — I’m not talking about safeguarding here — of forgiveness. We don’t treat our leaders as human. We expect them to be perfect. If you wish perfect leaders, you won’t have any leaders.”
Asked whether he had been “cancelled” in a “modern frenzy”, he replied: “We don’t know that for 30 or 40 years, and I’ll be dead by that point . . . I do know that I let God down. I let people down.”
The Archbishop was asked whether he would really like the victims of Smyth to forgive him. “Obviously, however it’s not about me,” he said. “I actually have never, ever said to a survivor, ‘You must forgive,’ because that’s their sovereign, absolute, individual selection. Everyone desires to be forgiven, but to demand forgiveness is to abuse again.”
Asked whether he forgave Smyth, he said: “Yes. I believe if he was alive and I saw him. But it’s not me he’s abused. He’s abused the victims and survivors. So whether I forgive or not is, to a big extent, irrelevant.
“What matters is: are the survivors . . . sufficiently loved by the Church and cared for, and are enabled, liberated, to rebuild their lives? After that, you possibly can start talking about forgiveness.” The Church had not done this, he said.
In response to the interview, the Bishop of Stepney, Dr Joanne Grenfell, who’s the lead safeguarding bishop, issued an announcement, through which she said that “this should be about victims and survivors, their needs and what they’re asking us to listen to and learn.”
In the past ten years, she said, the Church had developed and strengthened its safeguarding policies and practices, making significant improvements in training, national safeguarding standards, and external audits, and that this work would proceed.
“Every member of the Church is liable for a culture through which victims are heard, responded to well, and put first: there’s never a spot for covering up abuse,” she said. “We must learn from this and construct future foundations to be certain that the Church is as secure as it could be for all who come to worship or to have interaction with our many services and community projects.”
Speaking to the programme, one survivor, Graham, said: “What the Church has put me through makes the historic abuse pale into insignificance.” He spoke of obtaining notes from a Subject Access Request that stated “quite clearly . . . under-age boys getting beaten. If that was not a priority then what was?” The Church was “no higher at dealing” with abuse cases today, he said.
Asked what he made from the Archbishop’s’ apology, he said: “If, in 2017, he had contacted us, said ‘I’ll come and apologise to you personally; I’m sorry, I tousled,’ I might have forgiven him immediately, but he never has in those terms. . . He continues to blank us and refuses to inform us the reality. . . We are the victims and we need to know what happened, and we don’t yet.”
