Abuse perpetrated under the cloak of religion sets a trap that lasts a lifetime

One man’s experience of suffering shows how difficult it is to escape when trust is betrayed

Next week the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, will appear before the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). This article is not about what he may say, but about human cost. Last year, allegations re-emerged against John Smyth QC, a prominent evangelical. Smyth helped run holiday camps for public-school boys at Iwerne Minster in Dorset in the Seventies. They were religion’s Sandhurst, producing the next generation’s Christian elite. Welby attended them. In 1982, it emerged privately that Smyth had groomed more than 20 boys at the camps, and also beaten them at his home near Winchester. Eventually, he fled to Zimbabwe, where he repeated the pattern, before fleeing to South Africa. Everything went quiet.

Then, in 2013, a victim of Smyth protested at the failure by the Titus Trust, heir to the Iwerne Trust responsible for the camps, to pursue his accusations through a proper police investigation. In early 2017, following a television exposé that door-stepped Smyth in South Africa, Archbishop Welby was criticised: he had known about the 2013 complaint but allegedly done little. Some even accused him of covering up knowledge from his youth. He denied this, but apologised “unequivocally and unreservedly” on the Church’s behalf.

Writing at the time, I pointed out that the Church was not responsible, since it did not run the camps and Smyth was not a clergyman. I criticised an angry, anonymous “open letter” to the Archbishop by one of Smyth’s victims, which denounced him as being “on the side of the abuser”. The author should not make this unfair accusation anonymously, I said.

Then an unusual thing happened. The writer got in touch. He bitterly regretted his anonymity: it was part of the “trap” laid for him by Smyth all that time ago. He asked me to help him spring that trap. We agreed to meet.

The author’s name is Andy Morse. His late father, Sir Jeremy Morse, was an admired chairman of Lloyd’s Bank. Andy felt loved by his parents, but boarding school taught him to hide his feelings (homesickness) from them.

At Winchester College, he became an evangelical Christian. Smyth visited the school each term to help its Christian mission, infiltrating what Andy still thinks was a genuine spiritual movement. He would take boys out for Sunday lunch at his house nearby. Since they ate with his wife and family, this did not arouse suspicion.

For these boys, effectively fatherless during the term, Smyth seemed what Andy calls “a dream father”. He inspired them to serve the God in whom they fervently believed: they were chosen for great things. For this to happen, he told them they must atone for their teenage sins, such as masturbation.

The boys were thus prepared to be “purified”, which meant extreme punishment. Carefully selecting his most vulnerable followers, Smyth would beat them once they were 16. Andy knew Smyth for two years before he was beaten. The chastisement was ferocious: “You simply could not believe how much the first stroke hurt.” Latterly, there were a hundred strokes. Sometimes, Smyth forced one boy to help him beat the others. In Andy’s view, this boy was also a victim, not a willing accomplice. After being beaten, each boy would return from the shed and have to sit politely with Mrs Smyth. Sometimes their blood would stain the sofas.

Even after going to university, Andy was still in thrall to Smyth. His experiences led him, aged 19, to lose his faith. Yet he did not lose contact. His “dream father” ordered him to return, just after his 21st birthday in 1982, to receive what he promised would be the most severe beating yet.

Andy says the worst thing was the fear. This induced him to use painkilling drugs heavily. He could bear it no more. He did not come. Smyth waited for him at Winchester station, in vain. That night, Andy tried to kill himself, taking an overdose of drugs and cutting his wrists. It took him four months to tell his parents why. They learnt what had happened from the headmaster, not their son.

Andy’s father was a governor of Winchester. His attitude was: “I’ll do whatever Andy wants.” But what young, confused Andy wanted was bound to be influenced by others. The headmaster, John Thorn, won agreement from two victims’ parents (and Morse senior) that the story be kept quiet. This was understandable, given the mores of the time, but Andy sees it, too, as part of the trap. The silence made him hate himself more: “If I had not kept quiet, I might have saved others from Smyth. No one blames victims more than victims blame themselves. ” Mr Thorn made Smyth promise to sever all connection with Winchester, seek psychiatric help and never work with boys again.

At the same time, the Iwerne Trust received a separate complaint against Smyth. Despite a thorough report for it, setting out his acts against numerous boys and insisting they were criminal, there were no prosecutions. Two years later, Smyth left for Africa.

Andy Morse got married and had three children. In 2000, however, he started to suffer post-traumatic stress, flashbacks, episodes of serious depression. The unsuccessful reopening of the case in 2013 upset him deeply. The opportunity to end the victims’ suffering had been missed. He again came close to suicide.

The man I have come to know is troubled, yet sweet-natured, prone to sudden anger or distress, yet full of kindness. His anger is against institutions. He thinks ancient institutions are the worst. Whatever they say, they put their own interests before those of actual people. Last year, the Archbishop sent him a hand-written letter of sympathy. It annoyed Andy, however, partly because it got a fact wrong, partly because he thinks it was at variance with how the Church actually behaves. “They continue to hold safeguarding summits without requesting input from victims. No business would hold customer-care seminars without inviting customers.”

The Church truly was never responsible for Smyth, I say, and the Archbishop has responsibilities not only to victims, but to clergy and the faithful. Andy agrees, but perhaps with his head, not his heart.

I cannot say I blame him. As a vulnerable boy, he trusted a wicked man. His experience destroyed his idea of God, abused his quest for fatherhood, and trapped him in a cycle of guilt and rage. He saw something similar happen to several friends and the strain it put on his family. And he saw, in all those institutions that dealt with the aftermath, weakness, sometimes a self-serving quality worse than weakness.

Once, having breakfast, Andy and I joked that we were trying to form an “escape committee” for everyone caught in Smyth’s trap. Waiting for me in my London flat shortly afterwards was a parcel containg a board game called Escape from Colditz, a Christmas present from the Morse family. It is long and complicated, but it has rules, and escape is possible. In relation to abuse, I am learning that the rules may not exist and escape may not be permanent.

If that is so, no committee can effect the escape. But there can, at least, be some understanding. That is what people mean when they talk about victims and their families needing to be heard.