The accused

John Smyth,

a British barrister, was accused of “horrific” beatings of English teenage boys who attended Christian holiday camps in the 1970s and 1980s, and later at Christian camps in Zimbabwe. In 1997 he was arrested over the death of a teenage boy, whose naked body was found dead in a Zimbabwe camp swimming pool. The case was dismissed in 1998. Smyth died while under police investigation for abuse, so charges were never brought against him in the UK.

Jonathan Fletcher,

an evangelical vicar, was accused of “spiritual abuse” of at least 27 adults at his Wimbledon church. He allegedly beat his victims with a gym shoe, and subjected them to ice baths as well as naked massages and saunas. He worked at the church until he retired in 2012. After the allegations came to light in 2017, his permission to officiate the diocese of Southwark was revoked, but he has never faced criminal charges.

Peter Ball

resigned as bishop of Gloucester in 1993 after receiving a police caution for an act of “gross indecency” with a teenage boy—although the CPS decided not to prosecute. In 2012 he was arrested, and in 2015 he was sentenced to 32 months in prison for indecent assault and misconduct in public office after admitting to the abuse of 18 young men and teenagers between the 1970s and 1990s. Ball, who died in 2019, was released in February 2017 after serving half of his sentence.

George Bell

was an Anglican theologian, dean of Canterbury and bishop of Chichester who helped refugees during the Second World War. Thirtyseven years after his death in 1958, he was accused of sexually abusing a girl from the age of five to nine during the 1940s and 1950s. The diocese of Chichester formally apologised to the woman and paid compensation to her. A later independent review into the church’s handling of the allegation said there had been a “rush to judgment” and that Bell had been “hung out to dry.”