John Smyth was an eminent barrister and QC at the time the events outlined in the report took place in England. He was a pillar of society as well as a committed Christian, lay reader and preacher in the Church of England. Unlike the accusations against Jimmy Savile, Rolf Harris, Cyril Smith and Greville Janner (see earlier blogposts) which were all credulously accepted by the mainstream media and general public, this time there is compelling evidence that the activities Smyth is accused of did definitely take place.
As accurately reported in the media, during a period from 1978 to early 1982, Smyth inflicted savage beatings on a considerable number of young men attending Christian summer camps (organised by a trust chaired by Smyth) and also pupils of Winchester public school. These beatings were inflicted as ‘punishment’ for behaviour and sometimes thoughts which Smyth deemed to be ‘sinful’. It appears that the young men shared the same mindset as Smyth on the spiritual benefits that the beatings would bring by making them better Christians in the sight of God.
At the time corporal punishment was still legal in schools, and it could be argued that in the summer camps Smyth was acting ‘in loco parentis’ when the young men were away from home. Normally, this practice was used to discipline unruly boys for misbehaviour, and was usually confined to no more than six strokes of the cane. However, the beatings Smyth inflicted far exceeded this number to the extent that appreciable bleeding would often occur and, with one exception involving a short beating, were not for misbehaviour but instead for religious indoctrination objectives. No overt sexual activity occurred during these beatings although Smyth and the young men were sometimes naked.
So it is not entirely clear whether the beatings met the threshold of criminality, although it is probable that most people would think that they should have done had they been reported. However, this is beside the point as no criminal complaint was made before Smyth emigrated to Africa in 1984. What is almost incomprehensible is that there are no reports that any of the victims notified their parents or anyone in authority in the church or elsewhere about the beatings, and that time after time they voluntarily came back for more doses of this savage chastisement. The only explanation is that they were so brainwashed by the fundamentalist evangelical indoctrination that Smyth promoted, namely that these beatings were necessary to make them better Christians and to purge themselves of sin.
In 1982 a report was circulated to the summer camp trustees and the headmaster of Winchester school detailing the extent and nature of the beatings that Smyth was inflicting on the young men. The trustees included six ordained clergy of the Church of England. However, partly to protect the reputation of the trust, and knowing that the victims were unwilling to act as witnesses in a criminal prosecution, the police were not informed at that time. There appears to be no evidence that any of the clergy acting as trustees disclosed the report’s findings more widely with colleagues in the Church of England. Their decision not to inform the police was made in their capacity as Christian summer camp trustees, and not as clergy in the Church of England. The headmaster of Winchester school banned Smyth from any further contact with pupils, and agreed to the request of some parents not to inform the police. These decisions to keep the police and Church of England authorities in the dark enabled Smyth to continue with more beatings when he moved to Zimbabwe and later South Africa.
So how does Justin Welby fit into all of this? Well, as a young man in his late teens and early twenties he attended the Christian summer camps and became acquainted with Smyth. Welby never experienced any beatings himself and claims not to have heard any rumours about Smyth on this matter while attending the camps. Although they both came into contact with one another at this time it appears that they were not particularly close.
The pair briefly met up again in 1981 in Paris where Welby was working for an oil company. Smyth and a group of boys called on him on the way to a skiing holiday in Switzerland . A few weeks later a clerical friend also visited him, and was told that he had recently met Smyth, a mutual acquaintance of both. The clerical friend advised him to stay away from Smyth, but gave no further details or reasons, and nothing was said about the beatings.
Justin Welby was appointed Archbishop in 2013 and a few months later was formally informed of Smyth’s beatings and that the police had been made aware of the allegations against him. By this time Smyth was living in South Africa and died there in August 2018, but was never charged with any offence despite a Channel 4 programme broadcast in 2017 that featured the claims of some victims. Welby in 2013 was given to believe that the police were investigating Smyth and thus concluded that there was no need to become personally involved in this matter, especially as he appears to have no authority to intervene in a police enquiry. For this ‘lack of curiosity’ he is criticised in the Makin report which Welby unwisely commissioned.
All the main authors of the report are involved in child safeguarding and thus it may be reasonable to assume that they strongly subscribe to the current ‘believe the victim’ narrative, which places in an invidious position anyone questioning or challenging the accounts of those presenting themselves as victims. It is clear that all the sympathies in the report are with those claiming victimhood and very little with those facing accusations, including the Archbishop. So the whole report is severely one sided, taking minimal account of the behaviour and beliefs held by the victims at the time.
The Makin report repeatedly raises the issue of child abuse. There appears to be no evidence that any of those beaten at the summer camps were under the age of eighteen, although some of those beaten at Winchester school were aged seventeen. Child abuse is a somewhat tendentious and overused term among safeguarding activists who invariably interpret both ‘child’ and ‘abuse’ in the broadest possible terms. It is perverse to apply it to the young men who were victims of Smyth. They were all clearly sufficiently adult to have been in a position to personally judge whether Smyth’s vicious methods were the best way to liberate themselves from the effect of sin.
The beatings took place in a garden shed located in residences occupied by Smyth and his family. The victims were never coerced to visit Smyth’s home, to accept his hospitality, to agree to walk through his garden and enter the shed, and finally to make themselves available for a beating which most of them had experienced several times before. There is no point decades later blaming the Church of England for not taking any action, when these young men were complicit in keeping the church authorities in ignorance of Smyth’s brutal behaviour at the time. No safeguarding system would have caught Smyth, since there was no record of abuse against him at the time, and nobody reported his behaviour to those with any authority in the church until some years afterwards. Although occupying lay posts in the Church of England all his beatings were carried out in locations or at events over which the Church had no remit.
Given that Welby only knew Smyth very slightly decades before he became Archbishop, and that there were innumerable current issues of greater priority relating to the church which he would have needed to give his attention, the conclusion of the Makin report appears bizarre, taking into account the length of time since the beatings had taken place, the complicit behaviour of the victims, that the abuse took place at venues outside the control of the Church of England, and the very peripheral involvement of the Archbishop. It is impossible for any person however eminent to micromanage everything that comes across their desk, and the Makin report authors’ assumption that this outcome could have been achieved, in a matter rightly considered of low priority at the time, is absurd.
It is ironic that Welby has done considerably more than any previous holder of his office to improve the safeguarding of children in the church. Those writing the report seem to have framed their conclusions with the sole aim of triggering Welby’s resignation and, with the publicity generated, to further embed their extreme safeguarding regime into broader society. This promotes an agenda which seeks to portray all men as potential child molesters who need to be kept away from all children unless it is absolutely unavoidable. It is in effect a system in which all men are treated with suspicion and kept under surveillance by the authorities, one that has destroyed the hitherto normal healthy relationship of trust which previously existed between adults and children. The Makin report recommends that this authoritarian system of control should be further extended and enlarged, demonising men still more, thus preventing young people building resilience to the obstacles and difficulties they may face in society.
Only one bishop called on Welby to resign, and the senior colleagues he discussed this with advised him not to do so. He should have heeded their advice and thus avoided the loss of reputation, both to himself and the Church of England, which followed his foolish and difficult to comprehend decision to quit.
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