John Smyth QC, the notorious administer of cruel seemingly pointless beatings to up to 80 young men in England and Africa has died. The event leaves behind numerous questions as well a cohort of traumatised men who are still trying to come to terms with what happened to them when many were still children. The questions that are being asked need answers, particularly as the case will not now be examined in an English court of law. The church itself and the general public have a right to know how these crimes happened and what is going to be done to stop such things in the future.
The facts of John Smyth’s malign influence in and around the Iwerne Camps between 1978 and 1982 have been well covered in the Press and elsewhere. I do not propose to repeat this information. Rather I want to highlight some issues that are raised by the death of Smyth which may be of interest to my readers. In the first place there has been some discussion about the responsibility of the Church of England for the Smyth scandals. Some commentators have tried to distance the national Church from the Iwerne camps in which Smyth played a major role as Chairman of the Trust. The claim is that the Iwerne (now Titus) Trust is a separate trust and the Church has had no direct involvement in the organisation. Several people elsewhere have pointed out that it would be a misnomer to describe the camps as anything other than Anglican. The founder was a Church of England clergyman, the Trustees have always been Anglican, and the vast majority of campers are Church of England boys from top public schools. Many if not most of the schools involved have an Anglican foundation, especially those founded in the 19th century. Even though the Trust has a separate legal identity to the Church, it is hard for most people to discern any clear water between the two. One person I was speaking to likened it to the relationship between Momentum and the Labour Party. They may be separate, but each organisation depends on the other in a symbiotic way. The Church of England has to take an interest as the Iwerne camps have played an important part in the spiritual formation of a considerable number of Church of England bishops as well as numerous clergy.
The Iwerne trustees (now called Titus) are of course not some isolated random group that were brought together for this one purpose. Iwerne camps started in the 30s and thus there have been networks of ex-campers and officers who know each other well. All the trustees had been campers themselves. Anyone who had taken part in one of the camps is for ever known as an Iwerne man. Networking of this kind of course goes on within any institution. These Iwerne alumni, clergy and lay, might be categorised as a sub-group of the evangelical wing of the Church of England. They have a special link to the evangelicals who are associated with the hard-line Calvinist group that is linked to Reform. These find their ‘head-quarters’ of St Helen’s Bishopsgate and All Souls Langham Place. Others Iwerne men are identified with the more charismatic flavour of evangelicalism which we find at HTB. All Iwerne men are noted for the way they carry their evangelical public-school values into the church. This involves the exercise of social power and using their networks to exercise influence on the church. The ‘exile’ of John Smyth to Africa required access to funds and also powerful individuals who could fix things. There were clearly enough prominent upper middle-class Evangelicals who could be called upon to put in place an establishment ‘plot’ as a way of burying a scandal. Something similar happened in the case of Peter Ball.
I am, through my blog contacts, picking up on a variety of other hints, some of which have already rehearsed by newspapers and other blogs. In the first place it is suggested that the Smyth scandal has been deliberately covered up for decades. Only an enquiry will show clearly who knew what and when. Among the facts I have ascertained is that at least two of the current Titus trustees knew about the abuses long before the re-emergence of the 1982 report in 2012. My source is suggesting that the current statement on the Titus Trustees website is totally false and misleading. They there claim that the facts of Smyth’s abuses were unknown to any of them before 2012. The original report was circulated to eight people. Though many of these have now died, there are more lines of continuity between the old Iwerne Trustees and the current Titus Trustees than have been admitted. The Smyth scandal is arguably more serious as the number of traumatised victims totals 80+. Not all of these 80 were Winchester College victims. Some suffered in Zimbabwe when he was sent, effectively a fugitive from British justice.
Another aspect of the Smyth affair that I wish to share with my readers is the witness of Mark Stibbe, a Iwerne survivor, in an interview he gave last year. He spoke of the way that as a fragile young man at Winchester College, he found himself under the thrall of Smyth. The bond between the two was cemented by the fact that Mark had felt abandoned and neglected by his own father. Smyth became the substitute father and thus Mark was always anxious to please him as well as do anything asked of him. At the same time as reading this account I was also reading a study by an eminent sociologist who has tried to indicate that ‘brain-washing’ is a myth. The statistic that was used by this sociology professor to make this point is that only 0.1 % of visitors to a Moonie camp were there a year later. The implication was that the vast majority of people are totally resistant to cult recruitment. Thinking of Mark Stibbe when reading this, I could see that this has to be nonsense. Even if we do not describe Smyth’s tricks as ‘brain-washing’ it is clear that otherwise intelligent and normal individuals like Stibbe are susceptible to what is effectively a cult-like environment if the vulnerabilities are present in them. Almost 100% of those earmarked by Smyth and groomed by his smooth words, those of a manipulative charismatic conman, submitted to his will. The failure to understand these issues of vulnerability, charisma and manipulation mean that a large part of the scholarly world is ill-equipped to help victims and survivors of abusive environments such as those created by Ball and Smyth. 0.1 % of the boys who were members of the evangelical Christian Forum at Winchester College at the dangerous period of Smyth’s activity might have produced one finger. This is a long way from the 20+ identified by Ruston who were caught up in the scandal and suffer still so grievously. Smyth can no longer face human justice but those who knew what was going on should be brought to account and soon. There is an urgency that the Church of England should not act only because the public demands it. Once again, we have a scandal that is too big to ignore. If it is ignored it will damage the church for generations to come.
I think you have “finger” for figure a few lines from the end? It’s a sad business however you look at it.
I had to read that twice, but I think ‘finger’ is right. The argument runs that if brainwashing is successful in only .01% of cases, then the number attending Winchester’s Christian Forum would have produced only one finger of a Smyth victim, rather than the number of (entire) boys there actually were.
I was trying to work out what 0.01 percent of a group of boys would look like. I think the figure should have been 0.1% . I came up with a small piece of anatomy. – finger. It was only to make the point that the sociological study is not relevant in a real situation with a group of vulnerable boys.
Ah! Sorry, my stupidity!
You obviously know more than me about these camps Stephen and I’m willing to be called out if wrong but I find it hard to believe that all these boys were C of E. Usually the point in setting up organisations like this was to have a broad non-denominational reach; however if every Christian public school boy involved back then was C of E I’ll bow to it, it just seems strange.
Apart from that does anyone know the whys and wherefores of Smyth’s disappearance to Africa after the critical internal report? If there is something hidden that needs the light there it should come out.
Stephen actually said the majority of the boys were C of E. I have known a number of Iwerne alumni and the camps were strongly Anglican in their leadership and ethos. Conformity to the Iwerne ethos was encouraged in even minute details – of those at my theological college, many dressed identically and had identical Filofaxes. We used to joke about it – now it doesn’t seem so funny.
Since using Establishment networks was very much a part of the Iwerne modus operandi, it would make sense to encourage the boys to become Anglicans even if their own background was different.
I’ll need to shut up about Iwerne as it is quite outside the ambit of my knowledge. Coming from Scotland where the whole background of education and Church is different I will try to be more open to learning because the more I hear the weirder the whole situation sounds. I jumped to my initial defence of the C of E because I feel it seems to be the easy target of just about every brickbat that is going whereas my experience of it since coming to live here is that there is much good and positive life within it. I hope others can feel this too.
Last comment was from me but came up as anonymous.
They all are. Something had changed.
Yes, it seems now we have to type in our details every time. wonder if its to do with the new(ish) privacy laws?
Some might be interested in this article by Anne Atkins, whose brother was a Iwerne man. She describes her experience of working as a volunteer at one camp. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/03/anne-atkins-inside-thesexual-apartheid-john-smyths-summer-camps/
Shocking. I hope her faith in Justin is justified. So far, he seems to have done just as much ignoring of the victims as anyone else.
Thanks Janet. I think what I find interesting is what Anne Atkins was writing in October 2012 about John Smyth in this article, given what has been said by Justin Welby and the Titus Trust about when they became aware.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2220693/I-havent-handed-sex-offender-police–I-told-confidence-A-leading-agony-aunt-makes-explosive-confession.html
What had Anne Atkins heard, from whom, and when?
That’s interesting, I hadn’t seen it before. I hope Chris did report this person to the police.
Re. Smyth, who knew what, and when, are certainly the questions we need answers to.
Thank you JayKay for this cutting. I have reflected on its significance for my next post. This will appear Friday morning. Anne Atkins does not for one appear to think that there was an air of confidentiality attached to the stories about Smyth.
Thanks for your prayers. The result of my interview was a maybe! Which is better than no! Keep up the prayers.
Glad it seemed to go well, and hope the outcome is also positive.
Feel huge sorrow for all the victims of Smyth who will now be left feeling their abuser has escaped justice. Having an abuser die on you is incredibly hard particularly as the church and other institutions tend to see this as an end to the matter whereas for the victims the real struggle to survive has only just begun. No advice, because there is none, it is a hellish nightmare but please survive it because you deserve to be alive and happy so that Smyth does not win, and the church and other institutions quickly need to get off their backsides and react in order to validate the pain these victims will be going through.
Absolutely. Abuse victims deserve healthy and nurturing relationships with the church that abused them. It is up to the institution to mend itself and reach out.
To be accepted as unbiased, you would certainly have to make the point that John Smyth was not specially C of E himself. He had a Plymouth Brethren background perhaps? And his son has been in newfrontiers.
His profession and country of origin are 2 further things that also put him in a tiny minority (sometimes a minority of one) among Iwerne leaders. His abuse was the fourth such thing.
Let’s hope that is so. But when people know about abuse and do nothing, they become accessories.
Be careful! That sounds a little like ” he wasn’t really one of us!”, when surely the ” us” is a big part of what shapes/validates the culture in which the behaviours were not addressed…..
Hi Andrea
I have never in my life been part of any inner ring, because I do not agree with inner rings. I despise U and non-U, PLU (people like us) and all that. I grew up as a person from normal-income family surrounded by rich kids, which is the situation for many scholarship-children.
People are saying that ‘Iwerne’ did this and that, when ‘Iwerne’ was producing men of unparalleled character. The man who clearly was not that was judged by the company he kept, which is why the error was made. Please therefore agree that he was very atypical of Iwerne men in each of (arguably) his four most central characteristics (denomination, profession, country of origin, heinous activities). If anyone has anything to say against other Iwerne men, they can put it in black and white, but there seems to be remarkably little and nebulous at that. As for speaking against Iwerne as an amorphous mass in a non-time-specific, non-person-specific manner, that is a great sweeping generalisation, and therefore inaccurate.
Hi Chris. Iwerne does seem to have been male chauvinistic. Does that tally with your observations? No good quality Iwerne women?
Oh, and I think Andrea was talking about “othering”. Which we all tend to do when something awful is done, and we can’t really imagine ourselves doing that. It’s quite clear that Smyth was, to use non pc language, a weirdo. But how was it that no one within the organisation spotted it? Or if they did, they did nothing to prevent more victims falling into his hands? This is a charge that can be laid at many doors. We are soul searching, trying to discover how we change things so it doesn’t happen again. We’re not saying every man (and woman?) who attended an Iwerne camp was a creep who got off on beating people!
‘No good quality Iwerne women’? Mm, I’m not sure what to make of that.
(1) There were no Iwerne women at all till directly after Smyth, when those that there were were of the highest quality.
(2) Here I except the behind-the-scenes helpers, who were always of the highest quality.
(3) And because Iwerne was for men originally, replicating boys’ schools and free from female distractions, there were parallel female camps (Motcombe etc). The women and girls at these were also of the highest quality.
So who was it that wasn’t of the highest quality?
I was poking you a little bit because you spoke of “Iwerne men” in a way that is pretty outmoded today. We all usually say “people”. And I wondered, since you specified men, if you thought women weren’t really good quality? I’m glad to hear that the men did the grotty jobs themselves. I had heard that the few women who were included were simply treated as skivvies. So if that’s not so, excellent.
No – and this is the major misunderstanding which affects this whole discussion.
The important point to understand is this: ‘Iwerne’ is not a single entity unchanged over time.
I spoke of Iwerne ‘men’ quite literally with reference to the period when there were just men. That was the case up till Smyth, but was not the case afterwards. Not that Smyth was necessarily the deciding factor in this. Girls were included in Oxford conferences from at least 1982, in camps from at least the mid-eighties.
As for skivvies, again I am not saying you are inaccurate. The actual campers were mixed-sex after the date noted, but mostly the only other female involvement was indeed behind the scenes both before and after that date. (Some of that was to replicate school conditions, so blame the schools. Or the culture. But some of it was obvious and practical – what alternative? Why do I say that? Because generally the leaders were schoolteachers; and it was better for them to camp with their wives than without; and it was better for the wives to have community and activity rather than to have none. This was optional anyway, and much enjoyed by all accounts – certainly much appreciated.)
The senior-campers thing (university male students doing the donkey work) was an extremely long-standing tradition, going back to the 1950s or earlier.
At the Oxford conferences, the girls’-camp leaders came just as the boys’-camp leaders came. No difference in footing.
Have you noted about boys being absent from the girls’ camps as well as girls absent from the boys’? There’s no obvious difference between these 2 situations. It is common sense at this age above all not to complicate matters greatly by introducing the other gender into the mix. Even that went out in the mid-eighties though.
I hope this clarifies and gives a fuller and more precise picture. We have to get away from the stereotypes. They are a bit lazy.
Not sure about ‘outmoded’. You are not, surely, implying that fashion is always right, because no-one can believe that.
‘Iwerne men’ could never have referred to both genders. Not in the past, present, or future. Unlike perhaps ‘chaps’ or ‘guys’….
Christopher, what is a ‘high quality’ person?
Am I for instance not ‘high quality’ because I work as a cleaner, earn £8 an hour and live on a council estate?
Or am I a ‘high quality’ person because I have survived prolonged and serious abuse to hold down a job as a cleaner for many years, earn £8 an hour and therefore pay my tax and national insurance and contribute to society.
If we must not make sweeping statements about the Irwene camps we must certainly not make sweeping statements about the ‘quality’ of people.
But not to do so would be to say that character does not matter (when in fact nothing matters more) or to say that everything is subjective (yeah right).
I am obviously talking averages. I am also accentuating the positive. I am sure all of us encounter people with whose character we are not impressed, but I am not sure that arises much in this particular context, nor would one want to dwell on it nore necessarily mention it in contexts where it did arise. Most of the words that any of us say are shorthand based on averages.
As for class snobbery, background snobbery, or income snobbery: No, no, no.
Thank you Christopher, I was talking from the perspectives of the victim of John Smyth, fully appreciating that you are hurt by the bad publicity surrounding an institution that you personally found inspiring.
The victims of Smyth will have, for years clung on to the hope that if he and those that knew of his wrongdoing are finally brought to justice their lives will somehow change, they will become the people they were meant/wanted to be. They will not need mental health services, substance abuse or self harm advisers because their pain will have been vindicated and they can finally see themselves as ‘better quality’ people. It is essentially a mirage but it exists. Smyth’s death has suddenly ripped that hope away from them. Victims in this early and highly vulnerable stage following their abuser’s death can be left feeling they will never recover, never be the people they were meant to be. Language such as ‘high quality people’ can trigger an abreaction that is extremely dangerous so I was simply attempting to counteract such language.
I agree with all that; but not the idea that we cannot speak of ‘high quality people’ here. The high quality people in question neither had anything whatever to do with abuse, nor did anything but oppose it in the minority of cases where they heard of it. So high quality people they remain. And generalisations and damning entire longstanding organisations at a stroke (together with all their very various participants) are the way away from truth, not towards it.
As for male chauvinistic, I don’t know where to start. Anyone who does not understand that the male university students (senior campers) did much of the drudgery has a too-basic knowledge of the camps.
Secondly, Iwerne men were a real catch for women.
Thirdly, it was often the admirable young women from within the same circles who caught them (or whom they caught).
I don’t think male chauvinists would have been very attractive to any women. Least of all to women of that quality.
I think in summary one has to say that no blame attaches to any of the campers, the Iwerne men. What does seem highly dysfunctional is an organisation that incubates such a highly dangerous individual without noticing anything and then does nothing to protect boys in Africa from such a predator, once his evil was exposed. Considerable blame must lie with Trustees who knew and did nothing. The fact that Smyth came from a Brethren background has nothing to do with anything. His Englishness is also not in doubt even though he was born abroad. In Britain from the age of 5 and public school and Cambridge educated before becoming a QC. How much more more English can you be than that? Also many of my parishioners in the past have been in transit from many denominational backgrounds. There are few ‘pure’ Anglicans around.
The uncomfortable question that has to be asked is the degree of responsibility that lies with any of the leaders and trustees at Iwerne who knew and did nothing. By doing nothing they allowed boys in Africa to suffer and one to die. I wrote about Guide in a previous blog. If Smyth was guilty of manslaughter, then those who sent him to Zimbabwe share must participate in the guilt. Instead we have had cover-up and denial. This is something that all institutions seem to be good at.
Smyth’s parents were Brethren, but he attended an Anglican Church where his children were baptised, and he was a licensed lay reader. He studied at an Anglican theological college. I call that both British and Anglican. I was born in England but grew up in the US, my parents were Free Church. However, I consider myself both very British and very Anglican.
Undoubtedly Iwerne has produced some very fine leaders, and I have known a number of Iwerne men. Iwerne has a poor track record with women, however, and many of its alumni have not found it easy to form sound relationships with women. I seem to recall that David Watson attributed his rather tempestuous marriage to his Iwerne background, at least in part.
Having been trustee of several charities, I find the behaviour of the Titus Trust’s trustees difficult to understand or excuse. It seems to have ben an abnegation of their responsibilities. Even their very recent statement is completely inadequate (to say the least), despite all that we now know about John Smyth and safeguarding in general. In that respect I think it is fair to blame Iwerne – though of course the Iwerne men who were not trustees had no responsibility and cannot be blamed.
It’s the victims and survivors who are my concern, and they have my prayers.
Do you think, though, that his formation in the Brethren; his Spartan Canadian early education; and his military fathering – may all have been formative influences which he then brought to the C of E and to Iwerne?
That’s possible of course. But they did seem to chime with what was already the ethos of the Bash camps; David Watson was before Smyth’s time.
Even the greatest of hymn projects and achievements are very mixed in their legacy, and Iwerne is no exception to that. Unless we strive to understand the dark parts of the legacy as well as the good, we risk repeating the damage. In a case like this one, we also risk further harming the victims.
That is a truism regarding any large organisation.
My only point here has ever been that people are unjustly trying to smear a mass of innocent individuals and an organisation as a whole because of what happened through one somewhat atypical individual over a four-year period (what about the other 95% of the 85-year period when the camps have been running?).
This will happen through lazy thinking, sweeping generalisations, and the attitude generally held by people towards topics of which they have only a little knowledge. That’s before we ever mention the mob mentality. Or callousness towards men in their latter eighties. And towards people who are on one’s own side, and have done a great deal more than any of us to stop Smyth. Or the fact that the stress of this sort of thing literally and demonstrably kills.
Stop. Think.
Christopher, I have stopped and thought, often and long. In fact I took the trouble to research an MPhil on the pastoral care of abuse survivors. My own background is Reformed evangelical and I have spent decades understanding its influence once, both positive and negative. In addition, I trained with a number of Iwerne men, served a curacy in David Watson’s former church, and therefore have followed the Iwerne story for decades.
The Iwerne legacy is very mixed. Many of its alumni have done sterling work, but I also know those who have been crippled and broken by it. The most important point, currently, with regard to the Smyth story is the way that the Trustees and others did not stop Smyth’s behaviour, but simply facilitated his move abroad to inflict damage on boys in Africa. Even when police were investigating, they did not co-operate by voluntarily providing them with the Ruston report. And their recent statement seems to indicate they are still trying to avoid responsibility.
I am not sure what the age of the people involved has to do with it – except that the victims have had to wait far too long for justice and redress, and look like being denied it even now. Even as far as Smyth himself is concerned, it would have been better if he had been made to face up to his crimes, to give him the best chance of repenting before he met his Judge and Maker. It’s too late for him now – but not for some of those who were and are complicit.
Janet, some of your comments (and mostly what you write is sane) are from a parallel universe. How can anyone who was in every case a prime mover in opposing and halting JS be so-called ‘complict’?
There is a certain way one treats the elderly, e.g. our own grandparents or elderly parents. Especially so if they are good people and in any case on our side!
The scenario (1) everything was thought to be dealt with in 1982 when most refused counselling, (2) too late it was realised JS was reoffending miles away, (3) it’s thought best simply to stop him asap – this covers most things. People 20 years ago are not capable of thinking in a 2018 way, but a 2018 way is not by definition better anyway. Two proofs of that: (a) those now criticising also themselves have mostly thought in the way that was current at each date – the very deficiency of which they now accuse others: in 1998 (1982) they would themselves have thought like 1998 (1982) people; (b) these people also have a totalitarian view of 2018 thinking as though it is the only possible way and always has been. (They are also (c) blind to its own shortcomings.)
You can’t blame the world for not having always been the post-Jimmy Savile way. It has practically never been that way (apart from the vanishingly short period of the last 5 years.) How short are our memories? How illogical is our vengeance instinct?
I agree with you about the different ways that Iwerne affected people’s character development. In terms of good character production I have found it quite unparalleled. I also certainly came across a few broken or wounded people there (not malicious, though) – whether because of their involvement there or for independent reasons I do not know. Compare America: it is the crucible for both outstandingly good/free and outstandingly stunted character-development. Freedom is the cause of both.
For ‘complict’ read ‘complicit’.
I think there are some things we agree on. But even by 1982 standards, it was wrong to allow Smyth to evade justice. The Ruston Report made it clear that his behaviour was criminal – the police should have at least been informed. Even in 1992 it was known to be wrong to assist an offender.
If the Titus Trustees (some of whom I understand to. have been also Iwerne Trustees) held their hands up and said, ‘We were wrong. Please forgive us’ and made a genuine effort to meet Smyth’s victims and make restitution to them, that would be the time to consider their age and be lenient. But they are still pretending they knew nothing until 2014, when Anne Atkins has made it clear that a number of people knew much earlier than that. Nor do they seem to have made much effort to listen to victims and make amends.
If some are now very elderly, that only makes it more imperative that they are open about what they knew and assist an investigation. They owe it to Smyth’s victims and to themselves.
Yes, again there is much I agree with. But there is a large difference indeed between ‘being wrong’ and ‘having done at all steps what one thought was the right thing at the time’.
However many things are in strict truth criminal (and no doubt these increase exponentially all the time) the Christian way has been to restore and forgive and provide accountability structures and community there and then. This is a much less us-and-them approach. With the other approach there is no light at the end of the tunnel at all.
There would have, in the light of this, been net loss if the police had been informed. I believe, by the way, that they should have been (though hindsight is a wonderful thing) – because the Zim police should have been, and they could not have been without the UK police being. But the mendacious media tars the entire organisation with the same brush AND endlessly repeats the sensationalised details that it loves. Most current commenters, to their shame, seem no better than the discredited media in their approach here. What would happen if the media were let loose? Cue the closing down of an organisation that did incalculable net good. The sacred trust handed over by Bash. It’s no good evading that angle.
Indeed Janet the focus must not move from the survivors at this horrendous and difficult time. Their struggle will, at this time, simply be to survive and that they do so must be the overwhelming right now.
A short while ago a very kind person sent me this you tube lyric video of a song from The Greatest Showman (This is Me) and I just wanted to share it because in recent days it has given me much strength in my own struggles and I hope that anyone who has experienced abuse can also take comfort from it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRyMoHJu-i8
Thanks Trish. It’s great how much strength we can gain from music and other art-forms.
“Something inside so strong” by Labi Siffre is my go-to piece!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcKoYGNj0BU
Apparently the inspiration came from growing up gay, not just apartheid, although it seems a brilliant anthem for anyone experiencing abuse.
Dedicated to all victims/survivors but especially those of John Smyth.
Thank you both, I hadn’t come across either of those songs before, and have bookmarked them on my computer. They’re inspiring.
One of my favourite songs is ‘We Cannot Measure How You Heal’. Unfortunately there isn’t a good version on YouTube, but it’s easy to sing and I sing it a lot.
Another really inspiring piece isn’t a song, but really gives me strength. It’s Maya Angelou reading her poem ‘Still I Rise’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qviM_GnJbOM
People might enjoy the Greatest Showman. The modern slant is how a bunch of freaks and misfits found acceptance. And things like mixed race relationships. It’s very positive.
Christopher, you have answered me well. Perhaps it is partly a semantic problem. What you said did sound a little off key, not just to me. But plainly, you didn’t mean it in the way we thought. Women were definitely treated differently in those days, but it is not to be treated lightly. I have been refused a mortgage, a hire purchase agreement and a job in my time, simply on account of being female. There are still male chauvinists about. I try to correct them! I don’t think I should have enjoyed Iwerne, I have to say. Good to have discussed things with you.
Well, Athena, you know, there are no tones of voice nor is there any implying on the internet. It’s just text. I am sure there are male chauvinists. In a world of 7 billion people there are people of all kinds, so there are probably plenty of them alas.
Christopher, I think I understand that you feel that once Smyth reached a certain age, (60, 70?) he should have been treated more gently. Perhaps. But if an older person commits an offence against someone else, what about the someone else? What usually happens is they would be tried like anyone else, and the sense of mercy would be applied at the point of sentencing. You make an excellent point that we shouldn’t judge by modern standards. I have to say, I don’t think Savile is a good example. I’m afraid it seems many people knew what he was doing. People were much less sure-footed about dealing with it back then, but it was always wrong. He assaulted children in hospital! And I beg to differ about Smyth being shipped off elsewhere. How is he just going to stop? No one thinks everyone who went to an Iwerne camp is a pervert! I just think Smyth was. And no one stopped him.
In that case, you entirely misunderstand my meaning. I was not talking about John Smyth at all. Concerning *him*, I agree with you.
Totally misunderstood then. Sorry.