The Church of England covered up the actions of British barrister and prolific child abuser John Smyth, who abused private schoolboys attending evangelical Christian holiday camps in the 1970s and 1980s, according to an independent review.
Smyth is believed to have abused as many as 130 boys and young men in the UK and Africa across 50 years when he served as a barrister and held leadership roles in the Iwerne Trust---the organization that organized summer camps for young Christians.
When his abuse of young children was discovered, the Church of England allowed Smyth to move abroad, where he set up camps and continued abusing boys until 2018. He died that same year, never having faced justice for his crimes, per Yahoo News.
The Cover Up
Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, volunteered at the holiday camps where Smyth abused the boys in the 1970s. He has denied having any knowledge of the abuse, but an independent review commissioned by the Church of England found that it was "unlikely" he did not know about the crimes.
"[Welby] may not have known of the extreme seriousness of the abuse, but it is most probable that he would have had at least a level of knowledge that John Smyth was of some concern," the report read.
The review cited a complaint in 2013 wherein a victim approached senior figures in the church with abuse accusations against Smyth. One of the senior officials at the time was Welby.
In response, Welby said he had no knowledge of the abuse until the 2013 report but admitted that he "personally failed to ensure" that the allegations were investigated.
The independent review also noted that Smyth's actions were identified in the 1980s through a secret review carried out by the Iwerne Trust. That review found that the barrister carried out physical violence, sexual and psychological abuse, and coercive control against young Christian boys. However, his actions and the result of the review were never fully exposed until 2016.
Smyth was later allowed to move abroad. He first moved to Zimbabwe, where he faced charges of killing a 16-year-old boy found dead in a pool at a holiday camp. He moved to Cape Town later, where he ran the Justice Alliance of South Africa group until 2018, when he was removed as leader over claims of inappropriate behavior, per The Guardian.
Calls for Resignation
Following the publishing of the review, a petition launched by members of the General Synod---the church's parliament---gathered over 8,000 signatures calling for Welby's resignation over the failure to alert authorities about Smyth's actions.
Welby, however, has said he does not intend to resign. Instead, he hopes the independent review would help support "the ongoing work of building a safer church" in England and in other countries.
