THE “prolific, brutal and horrific” abuse perpetrated by John Smyth, a Reader within the Church of England, was covered up by “powerful evangelical clergy”, the long-awaited Makin review has concluded.
The “Independent lessons learning review”, originally resulting from be published five years ago, lists the Archbishop of Canterbury as amongst those that did not act. From 2013, the Church of England knew “at the very best level” concerning the abuse, the report says, but did not refer it either to the police or to the relevant authorities in South Africa, where Smyth died while under investigation by the police (News, 13 August 2018).
Archbishop Welby issued a strongly worded — and highly personal — apology for his “profound failures” upon the publication of the report on Thursday afternoon.
“The review is evident that I personally did not be certain that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated,” he said.
The way by which the Church of England engages with victims and survivors had modified beyond recognition, he continued. “Checks and balances introduced seek to be certain that the identical couldn’t occur today. [But] I repeat my apology contained within the review, that I didn’t meet quickly with victims after the complete horror of the abuse was revealed by Channel 4 in 2017. As the report says, no Archbishop can meet with everyone but I promised to see them and failed until 2020. This was unsuitable.”
Lessons had been learned up to now 11 years, he said. “That doesn’t reverse the terrible abuse suffered but I hope that it may possibly be at the very least of some comfort to victims. I can only end by thanking them again for his or her courage and persistence and again by apologising profoundly, not just for my very own failures and omissions but for the wickedness, concealment and abuse by the church more widely, as set out within the report.”
In an echo of earlier safeguarding reviews, the Makin report concludes that a desire to guard the status of an establishment, and of people, shaped the response of those that knew of the abuse. The Revd David Fletcher, who was told of the abuse in 1981, told the review before he died: “I believed it could do the work of God immense damage if this were public.” Canon Michael Green was, the review says, “sworn to secrecy”.
Mr Makin concludes that by 2012 a “significant number” of individuals knew concerning the abuse, and writes that the evidence “dashes” claims that only a “tight caucus of individuals” knew. Those with knowledge of the abuse included “many Church Officers”, including at the very least one bishop. “A big variety of people who were aware of the abuse at the moment were very senior figures inside the Church of England, or went on to very senior positions including Archbishops and Queen’s Chaplain,” together with lay people “holding influential and powerful positions inside the Conservative Evangelical network”, one among whom was a General Synod member.
The abuse “must have been reported to senior figures inside the Church of England and to the relevant authorities, including the police”, Mr Makin writes, and concludes that Smyth “was capable of abuse boys and young men in Zimbabwe (and possible South Africa) due to inaction of Clergy inside the Church of England”. One child, Guide Nyachuru, died “in suspicious circumstances” at one among Smyth’s camps in Zimbabwe.
While details of the sadistic abuse, which included vicious beatings in a sound-proofed shed, have been in the general public domain since an investigation by Channel 4 News seven years ago (News, 10 February 2017), the review sets out intimately the extent of the “traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks” perpetrated by Smyth, starting greater than 50 years ago.
In the UK, there are at the very least 30 victims. Some were as young as 13. Smyth’s own son was abused between the ages of seven and 11. One victim told the review: “I remember pondering ‘he’s going to kill me.’ I used to be that scared.” One victim attempted to take his own life after Smyth advised him to self-harm as a way of fighting sexual feelings.
Smyth, a QC, was the previous chair of the Iwerne Trust (whose activities were later assumed by the Titus Trust), which, with the Scripture Union, ran holiday camps for boys at English public schools. Smyth met a lot of his victims at Winchester College.
It is already known that many individuals within the Church of England were aware of Smyth’s abuse within the early Eighties. The Iwerne Trust launched an investigation after a young man grew so petrified of the beatings that he tried to take his own life in 1981. The confidential report, accomplished in 1982, was written by a C of E priest, the Revd Mark Ruston, when he was Vicar of Holy Sepulchre with All Saints, Cambridge, with the Revd David Fletcher (who died in 2022).
The Makin review records that six members of the clergy were amongst those that received a duplicate of the report, and concludes that they “participated in an lively cover-up to stop that report and its findings – including that crimes had been committed — coming to light”. In the years that followed, a growing number of individuals learned of the abuse.
The current Archbishop of Canterbury was a dormitory officer on the Iwerne holiday camp within the late Nineteen Seventies, when Smyth was one among the leaders. He has all the time maintained that he was unaware of any abuse until 2013 and initially denied that Smyth was Anglican (News, 18 April 2019) — one among quite a lot of inaccuracies in his account which the review corrects.
He told the review that he had been warned in 1981 by the Revd Peter Sertin, the Chaplain at St Michael’s, Paris (where the Archbishop was a worshipper), to “stay away” from Smyth, who was “really not a pleasant man”. The warning was “vague”, the Archbishop told the review. An exchange of Christmas cards with Smyth and donations that he made to Smyth’s ministry in Zimbabwe weren’t indicators of closeness, he argued.
The review concludes that, on the balance of probabilities, it’s “unlikely that Justin
Welby would have had no knowledge of the concerns regarding John Smyth in
the Eighties within the UK. He may not have known of the acute seriousness of the
abuse, nevertheless it is most probable that he would have had at the very least a level of
knowledge that John Smyth was of some concern.”
A former Bishop of Chelmsford, John Trillo, who died in 1992, was informed of the abuse in 1983 while chairing a range conference at which Smyth was assessed. The review also reports that the previous Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey was informed of the abuse while Principal of Trinity College, Bristol, and was sent a duplicate of the outline of the Ruston report, which he denies seeing.
The Revd Hugh Palmer, who went on to be Rector of All Souls’, Langham Place, visited a victim who almost succeeded in taking his own life in 1982. He told the review that he didn’t realise the attempt was connected with abuse. In 1982, a victim discussed the abuse with Canon Andrew Cornes. There is not any motion that he took motion to reply to this. He told the review that he thought the matter was being handled.
The review relays that several of Smyth’s victims have since develop into church officers and would technically have “did not act” in accordance with the Terms of Reference. They include the Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Andrew Watson.
Mr Makin writes that Smyth’s abuse was known “at the very best level” of the Church of England from July 2013, by, amongst others, Archbishop Welby and the Rt Revd Stephen Conway, then Bishop of Ely, along with other senior church officers. There was, nonetheless, “a definite lack of curiosity shown”, Mr Makin says, concluding that Smyth “could and will have been reported to the police in 2013”.
Police were contacted in July 2013, the Bishop of Ely’s safeguarding adviser, Yvonne Quirk, in relation to disclosures from victims. She told Mr Makin that she had been informed that the police couldn’t take the case any further. This process, Mr Makin says, was assumed by church leaders to amount to a “report back to the police”, though no crime record or reference number was made. On Christmas Day 2013, one among Smyth’s victims attempted to take his own life.
The lack of a proper referral to the police in 2013 meant that three and half years were, in effect, “lost” — “a time inside which he might have been dropped at justice and any abuse he was committing in South Africa discovered and stopped”. Mr Makin says that, although there’s “little concrete information” about Smyth’s actions during this time, “it is extremely likely that he was continuing to abuse young men.” Mr Makin sets out intimately complaints made about Smyth’s behaviour at Bible-study groups that he was running in Cape Town: that he would shower with young men attending the sessions, “then stay naked as he discussed masturbation and pornography with them.”
A psychologist who accompanied the reviewers, Dr Ellie Hanson, concluded: “the [religious] beliefs by which John Smyth operated are critical to understanding how he manipulated his victims into it, the way it went on for therefore long, and the way he evaded justice.” Victims described how Smyth spoke of sin within the lead-up to their abuse, and the way the largest “sin” was identified as masturbation.
The review draws heavily on the harrowing testimony of victims. One recalled how within the last conversation that he had along with his father, his father was still apologising to him. “If Justin Welby or the Church of England had exposed John Smyth’s abuse in 2013 publicly, it could have been a distinct life or a distinct end of life for my father,” he said.
The Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Andrew Watson, a victim of Smyth, issued an announcement, saying that reading the report had been “each an enlightening and a deeply harrowing experience”.
He continued: “There is far here that’s deeply shocking, especially the abuse of so many victims in Africa, following the disastrous decision of the Iwerne and Winchester establishments to cover things up. As the Report outlines, those attempts were flawed from the beginning, and any concept that Smyth’s behaviour may very well be regulated was hopelessly naïve. Smyth’s combination of charm and menace, narcissism and manipulation, hypocrisy and violence, made him a really dangerous man indeed, and completely uncontrollable by any normal means.”
The Report wouldn’t be easy reading for anyone involved, he said. “But it’s my hope and prayer that it’d bring at the very least some measure of relief to Smyth’s victims — British and African, known and unknown — in addition to providing salutary lessons as we redouble our efforts towards constructing a safer Church.”
A bunch of survivors gave their reactions on Thursday after publication of the report. They told the Church Times that they welcomed the review. There was good safeguarding occurring “in lots of but not all dioceses”, they said. “We are actively encouraged by that local work, but utterly dismayed by the behaviour of the C of E hierarchy.”
The 27 recommendations within the report “reflect similar recommendations in dozens of previous safeguarding reports over 40-plus years that the C of E has previously chosen to disregard or disregard”, they said.
“Regrettably we now have little confidence that the C of E will take any more notice of the recommendations of this Review than it has of all those recommendations of the numerous previous safeguarding reports.”
Commenting on the late delivery of the Makin report, they said: “Justice delayed is justice denied, particularly to all those John Smyth victims who’ve now died. We attribute the overwhelming majority of that delay to the deliberate under-resourcing of the project by the C of E.”
The group also said that the findings “reveal that [the] entire Church hierarchy still has no understanding of trauma-informed approach, despite this being established over and over previously, including most recently within the 2023 Wilkinson Review. . . The Church continues to interact by utterly inappropriate means with victims and survivors in 2024.”
They were particularly concerned that “some Church leaders seek to characterise John Smyth as a ‘lone wolf’. In fact he is an element of an extended and ongoing tradition of abusers, a lot of whom have targeted the C of E as a ‘soft touch’.”
Other victims of John Smyth might now come forward, they said. “The C of E must commit today to supply a follow-up report in 18 months time based on such future evidence, should that be vital.”
independent-learning-lessons-review-john-smyth-qc-november-2024.pdf
