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JOHN SMYTH, the pervet who subjected scores of boys and young men to “brutal and horrific” physical and sexual abuse over a 40-year period in Zimbabwe, South Africa and England, has led to the down fall of the Archbishop of Canterbury over concerns he covered up this shame.
Justin Welby, 68, who as the Archbishop of Canterbury was the spiritual leader of the global Anglican Church community, resigned on Tuesday.
His resignation came five days after the independent Makin Report singled him out for criticism over his handling of abuse allegations involving Smyth dating back to the 1970s.
Smyth is believed to have violently abused more than 115 boys and young men in Zimbabwe, South Africa and England.
Smyth was an evangelical, Canadian-born, British barrister who held leadership roles in a charity called the Iwerne Trust, which ran Christian camps in England and Wales.
Initial details of Smyth’s physical abuse of schoolboys who had attended the camps during the 1970s and 1980s emerged in a 1982 report by the charity. Smyth was reported to have brought pupils from prestigious public schools in England, including Winchester College, to his home, where he lashed them with a cane in his shed.
The case was not reported to the police by the trust, the church or the schools whose pupils were subjected to abuse.
Instead, Smyth moved to Zimbabwe, where he set up the Zambesi Ministries, which ran similar Christian camps for schoolboys.
In 1992, after facing charges of killing a teenage boy who was found dead in a swimming pool, Smyth moved to Cape Town, South Africa.
In 2013, a victim reported abuse by Smyth to the Church of England, which in turn reported the allegations to the police, but an investigation was not initiated.
The 1982 Iwerne Trust report was made public in 2016, prompting an investigation by Channel 4 News in 2017.
Smyth died the next year in Cape Town at the age of 77.
In total, he has been held responsible for the violent abuse of at least 115 children and young men in England, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
The report said Smyth had subjected boys and young men to “brutal and horrific” physical and sexual abuse over a 40-year period.
Smyth beat some victims with up to 800 strokes of a cane and supplied nappies to absorb the bleeding, the report said.
He would then drape himself over his victims, sometimes kissing them on the neck or back.
The archbishop of Canterbury has resigned after an investigation found that he failed to pursue an investigation into allegations of serial physical and sexual abuse by a volunteer associated with the Church of England at Christian summer camps.
Welby announced his resignation “in sorrow”, taking “personal and institutional responsibility” for a lack of action on the “heinous abuses” allegedly committed by the late Smyth, a volunteer at Christian summer camps decades ago.
“The last few days have renewed my long felt and profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures of the Church of England,” Welby said.
Educated at Britain’s most prestigious private school, Eton, Welby worked in the oil industry for more than a decade before being ordained in 1992.
He was made the senior prelate of the Church of England in 2013.
Welby was an outspoken spiritual leader of the global Anglican community who grappled publicly with issues ranging from same-sex marriage to Britain’s immigration policy, Israel’s war in Gaza, slavery reparations, climate change and his own mental health problems.
Welby said he had “no idea or suspicion” of the allegations before 2013, but the independent report concluded it was unlikely he would have had no knowledge of the concerns regarding Smyth in the 1980s. – H-Metro Reporter/Al Jazeera
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