Victims furious with Church for failing to expose abuser

VICTIMS of a Christian evangelist who were brutally abused as teenagers are “incandescent with rage” that the Church of England and police failed to bring him to justice before he died and have demanded that the Archbishop of Canterbury explain why he did not expose the scandal.

They said the delays in acting on a string of abuse allegations before John Smyth QC’S death from an apparent heart attack at his home in Cape Town on Saturday had robbed them of any chance of closure.

Andrew Morse, who twice tried to take his own life after years of savage beatings, said: “I’m a generally very forgiving person, but Justin Welby was the Archbishop of Canterbury.

“Jesus would not have silently protected the abusers, he would have stood with the abused.”

Smyth, 77, was accused of savagely beating more than 20 boys in thousands of sadomasochistic assaults in his garden shed in Winchester after meeting some of them at Christian holiday camps in the late Seventies. Many were pupils at Winchester College.

Archbishop Welby, who attended the camp and knew the barrister, was forced to issue an “unreserved and unequivocal” apology on behalf of the Church last year, admitting that it had failed to report the allegations when they came to light as far back as 1982.

But victims have questioned why he did not take a personal interest in the case in 2013, when one of their number reported the abuse to the Bishop of Ely and the police were informed.

At that point, officers said there was not enough evidence to pursue the case. Yet they were never handed a 1982 report commissioned by the Iwerne Trust, which oversaw the camps, detailing the “horrific” scale and severity of the practice. The report was written by Mark Ruston, a vicar, but it was never published and Smyth was allowed to move overseas.

Hampshire Police did not investigate until early last year, after a Channel 4 investigation. Ten days ago, officers wrote to Smyth’s victims stating that they had been instructed by the CPS to interview him on UK soil with a view to prosecution.

It was too little too late. His family confirmed that he had died at 9am on Saturday of a probable heart attack after a heart procedure last week.

A number of his victims have

instructed a solicitor to pursue civil action against those they accuse of failing them, including the Iwerne Trust, which is now part of the Titus Trust.

Andrew Graystone, a victims’ advocate in the case, said: “The amount of information given to the police in 2013 was so slim. They knew it was illegal. They knew there were at least 19 victims, they had clear, contemporaneous evidence yet they stayed shtum.”

Mr Graystone acknowledged that the Archbishop had denied being aware of the abuse until 2013, but he said he could not fail to have noticed that Smyth, the chairman of the Iwerne Trust since 1975, had “dropped out of circulation” in the early Eighties.

“Welby had been lodging at Mark Ruston’s vicarage. This was the talk of evangelical Christians in Cambridge. It was a very closed circle,” he said. “They all worked for the Church, they all went to Iwerne. He must have been walking around with his eyes closed.”

Mr Morse, with the support of eight other victims, wrote an open letter to the Archbishop last February, published in The Daily Telegraph, asking him to explain why he had failed to expose Smyth’s abuse in 2013, but says he was met with a wall of silence.

Another victim, who uses the name Graham, said he remained angry that the Archbishop did not do more when he learned of the allegations. “I am incandescent with rage,” he said. “It was a wasted opportunity to address the most horrendous level of crime that has been known about for many years.”

The Iwerne Trust’s summer retreats for public schoolboys in Dorset were described as religion’s Sandhurst, intended to produce the next generation of elite Christians. Smyth was the only member of staff accused of any abuse.

A spokesman for the Titus Trust said last year that the “very disturbing allegations… should have been reported to the police when they became known”.

The Bishop of Bath and Wells, Peter Hancock, the Church of England’s lead safeguarding bishop, said it was important for all organisations involved to look at a lessons learnt review, while offering support to survivors.

A Church of England spokesman said: “The Archbishop has stated that he knew nothing about the abuse at the time and when he learnt the full extent in 2017 he issued a personal apology to all the survivors and a full statement. Safeguarding has always been an absolute priority of his ministry.

“He has also gone on record about the information that came to Lambeth in 2013 from the Bishop of Ely – it fell within his diocese – that a survivor of Smyth had come forward.

“This was reported to Cambridgeshire Police, as well as the Church authorities, where Smyth was known to be worshipping in South Africa.

“These actions were checked with the National Safeguarding Adviser at the time, and an offer of support was made to the survivor.”