Channel 4 News, in an excellent investigation led by Cathy Newman in 2017, broke the story of Smyth’s savage beatings of boys and young men within the garden shed of his Winchester home. Announcing on June 18 the documentary to be produced by Passion Pictures, the broadcaster said:
“The documentary will explore the psychology of a prolific abuser and tell the within story of John Smyth’s sinister world, through exclusive and intimate testimony from those near him. It will reveal the devastating impact of Smyth’s actions through moving accounts from victims and survivors within the UK and abroad.”
In the Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties Smyth groomed his victims on the Iwerne evangelical camps aiming at pupils from the ‘top 30’ English boarding schools. Until the inner circle of Church of England clergy behind the cover-up of his abuses expelled him in 1982, he was chairman of the charitable trust that ran the vacation camps held at a boarding school within the Dorset village of Iwerne Minster.
I attended two Iwerne summer camps as a boy from Westminster School in 1979 and 1980. I remember Smyth because the camp ‘adjutant’ who made the announcements about which afternoon activity us ‘campers’ had been allocated to and usually acted as master of ceremonies. I learned that he regarded me as a nasty influence on a friend of mine whom he was attempting to cultivate, unsuccessfully in that boy’s fortunate case.
As a Cambridge University undergraduate in 1985 I became an ‘officer’ on the camps and continued in that role during my student years. It was a major voluntary commitment involving, on top of attending camps during vacations, a weekly prayer meeting in the course of the university term and giving talks to Christian Unions at various Iwerne schools.
I now consider the Iwerne work refracted elements of the culture of English public schools to create a sub-culture of its own, characterised by misogyny, snobbery and bullying. Not everyone who served on the camps bought into that toxic culture. But enough of the senior leadership did to make it the fact that the documentary needs to reveal whether it is to inform Smyth’s terrible story accurately.
Since leaving C of E ministry in 2019, I even have spent many hours as a contract church journalist wading through the assorted reports into abuses throughout the C of E’s conservative evangelical constituency, which I had been a part of. The experience has been removed from a bundle of snickers. But I feel this journalistic work must be done for 3 reasons.
Firstly, there are sincere Christian people who find themselves a part of Anglican conservative evangelical churches influenced by the Iwerne sub-culture. They have to be equipped with the news and evaluation essential to assist them to vary the culture of their churches for the higher.
Secondly, the abuses committed by leaders in that sub-culture have to be taken with the utmost seriousness. Their victims must not experience any type of minimisation of their abuse. Some might imagine stressing support for victims is preaching to the choir. But I still have some contacts within the conservative evangelical world and a number of the things I even have been hearing are disturbing.
I even have heard it said of 1 abuser: “At least he didn’t penetrate anyone.” It would also seem that some inside that sub-culture are feeling sorry for themselves within the wake of the abuses the secular media has exposed of their world. They may pay lip-service to safeguarding and supporting victims but in private they appear to be singing a quite self-pitying tune.
Thirdly, there are unfortunately some power-players and careerists who’re in positions of leadership each throughout the wider C of E and its conservative evangelical constituency. They have to be held to account and lightweight must be shone on their tendency to pursue their very own interests quite than those of the people they ought to be serving.
In case anyone thinks I’m pitching for business from the Smyth documentary, I’m fully persuaded that the narrative concerning the sub-culture that enabled his abuses should come from his victims, not from me.
The danger of spending as much time as I even have covering church abuse stories is cynicism. What saves me from that is reflecting on the character of Jesus Christ as he’s presented within the 4 New Testament Gospels. He didn’t abuse vulnerable humanity. Just the alternative, he engaged with and helped people from all social backgrounds, he healed them and fed them, and in response to orthodox Christian belief, he gave his life to redeem us from our sins.
Which leads me onto my final reflection. I even have a philosophical reason for believing the Gospels to be true. I don’t consider our fallen human nature is able to inventing the Jesus that the Gospels proclaim.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
