by ‘Graham’
Smyth victims have had two events to think about: Justin Welby’s confused and cack-handed interview with Laura Kuenssberg; and then his event at the Cambridge Union built around his musings on “truth”.
Yet, despite his call for “the truth that leads us to care for human dignity”, after repeated requests, Justin Welby refuses to meet and will not answer the questions of victims of John Smyth QC. He will face up to an audience in Cambridge and try to justify himself to them: but will not do so with victims. Which group is more deserving of his “truth”?
I had my very first, and only, meeting with Justin in December 2024, face to face, almost eight years after we had first asked to meet. I will ignore that he did not use my name once in two hours and walked out at the end without a handshake or goodbye. Leave that. One thing that did come out of that meeting was a commitment to write “his account”. In 2017, David Porter, his then Chief of Staff, promised us an account of what Justin did or did not do in 2013, and what he did or did not know. It was David who said to me, re 1982ff “of course he knew something. He knew Smyth had left suddenly, and under a cloud. He just did not know why and wondered whether it was adultery or theft” [to be clear that is not a direct quote, though I have a contemporaneous record of that meeting from late 2017].
Again in 2021 at our very unsatisfactory zoom meeting with Justin in COVID, once more Justin promised his account. It did not appear. So, at my December 2024 meeting, in front of witnesses, I tried again. I asked for a “brain dump”, everything he could remember, an “affidavit”, “witness statement”, whatever you want to call it. I was asking for the most comprehensive telling he could manage, a piece of work at the end of which he might say “I am exhausted, that is it. I may have forgotten something, but right now, that is it. Everything”. He agreed to write his account.
I had to wait nearly two months, but in late January 2025 it arrived. And it was a bare shadow of what it might have been. His “account” did not mention David Porter, David Fletcher, Thabo Makgoba, Stephen Conway, and numerous others. It did add some minor detail, but missed great chunks of the story. It was a bare shadow of a full account.
However, what wound me up the most, was that it was marked Strictly P&C, and specifically stated that it could not be shared with anyone. Now, I had never agreed to that. And what might he have written that could not be in the public domain ? Not shared with other victims ? Shared with Keith Makin or NST ? In fact, the account was so poor, there was little to add to what we knew. He also wrote that this was his final account, and he would answer no more questions.
Bar one killer fact. Now, I cannot demand anonymity, and the confidence of others, and then breach such confidences. So, I have NOT shared his account or this new fact (bar, with his subsequent consent, to my therapist and “minder”). But where in all of this is transparency, truth, openness?
Does this matter? Yes. The Makin Review focuses too much on 1982-2012. Yes, we all know lots of people knew post 1982. Yes, senior people within Iwerne and wider evangelical network. But the world was a different place then. Where Makin is so weak is August 2013. We now know that three Archbishops and ten Bishops had received the disclosure of Smyth’s abuse by August 2013. What we did not know, and Makin appears not forensically to have examined, is what anyone did then. The Makin review just fizzles out. No evidence of anyone doing anything. Really? The aim of the Makin Review was to consider the Church of England’s response to the disclosure of John Smyth’s abuse. By 2013, safeguarding existed, and there can have been no doubt in the mind of anyone receiving the disclosure, that the abuse was diabolical, and probably criminal. Yet, it appears, no one did enough. Noone can dispute that John Smyth was not stopped, and was not brought to justice.
Justin said at the Cambridge Union that he had been “insufficiently persistent” and regretted that he did not “check and check and check that action was being taken”. In fact, there is no evidence that he checked even once. And it is risible to suggest he was in any way “persistent”. Isn’t this just trying to rewrite the “truth” ?
The subsequent announcement by the National Safeguarding Team that they would put ten people forward for investigation under the Clergy Disciplinary Measure targets those who knew in the period 1982ff and appears to ignore the very senior people, some still serving, who received the 2013 disclosure. (This has since been reduced to just seven people.)
And this leaves lots of unanswered questions for victims, particularly of Justin Welby. What did you actually do in 2013 ? Makin failed to document this period. Victims have a right to know.
Back to my title, and forgiveness. Justin walked straight into the heffalump trap set by Laura Kuenssberg. And that got the headlines. But he does not adequately address what forgiveness might look like for victims ( including the victim who attempted suicide on Christmas Day 2013, unaware that Justin Welby, Lambeth and the senior Church of England were now aware of the abuse). I stated on the Laura Kuenssberg show that there can be no forgiveness while victims do not get transparency and the truth. I stated that, had Justin contacted us in 2017, given his account, offered support, and apologised, then I would have forgiven him back then. But the mealy-mouthed apologies, the hiding behind advisers, the refusal to meet, still angers me. I am just asking for a meeting, at the end of which I can say, “thank you, I can move on now”. I might or might not learn something new. But, at the end of it, I would like to be able to say “Thank you for being so honest”.
And Justin’s “truth”? Those things he would defend to the hilt? That Smyth was not Anglican? That he left for Paris in 1978 and lost touch with Iwerne? That he was “not in those circles” (but in February 2017 immediately called all the evangelical leaders of his “tribe”). Where is the truth in his fourteen “unevidenced assertions” (thankyou, Keith Makin for that lovely euphemism) to Cathy Newman on Channel Four?
Victims live with their abuse, and their trauma comes and goes, but is always there. Loose ends eat away, deceit and lack of transparency do disproportionate harm. Victims deserve, themselves, to hear the testimony of those who weave their way through their abuse story. Yes, Makin and police as well, but victims first. “Victims Come First”. Now, who said that ? How does Justin think is affects victims when they read about him pontificating about truth and alleging that a five year Review, costing over £1m, “got it wrong” with new evidence that we victims do not know about ?
So, Justin refuses to meet and answer my questions. They are a bit OTT, but that reflects my OCD, my obsession with discovering the truth. They are placed in a separate post which is being published at the same time as this one.
Finally, so many people, particularly my Mum, say “it’s over, walk away, Makin is published, restart your life”. If only it was that easy. My abuse was not limited to the shed. It has continued since I came forward in 2012, not just in the treatment by the CofE, but by the evasiveness, lies and refusal to engage at all with victims, by senior clerics. This treatment continues and eats away at me. I cannot move on until I feel I have honesty and the truth.
addwndum follows or follow this link https://survivingchurch.org/2025/07/08/the-unanswered-questions-attachment-addendum-to-grahams-article/
Deep deep sorrow, my friend.
Stephen, can you signpost us to the other piece Graham refers us to?
addendum follows or follow this link https://survivingchurch.org/2025/07/08/the-unanswered-questions-attachment-addendum-to-grahams-article/
Graham, I cannot believe that after everything you have written with your vivid descriptions of your suffering and that of other victims, Welby still cannot admit the truth and say ‘sorry’ to give you peace.
As always, I pray for you at the dawn of each day. Susan
Welby’s hunger to be right is greater than his hunger to love the broken. If that’s Christianity, I’ll pass – what an ungodly shower, called to serve whom exactly?
Welby will go to his grave, shaking his fist and protesting adamantly that HIS truth is the truth. His behaviour is appalling.
There can be no forgiveness from victims when he retraumatises them repeatedly. It is reprehensible that he is meeting with anyone rather than victims to discuss the situation.
Clergy are accustomed to being given slots where they can opine, unchallenged, and then say that the Church needs sermons to educate and illuminate the Bible. ‘Sermons’ like Welby’s self-serving, righteous indignant proclamations simply serve to diminish victims and drown out their voices. Simply put, they are not the ‘Sermon We See’ as the poet Edgar Guest put it.
Perhaps Welby, and Anglicans more generally, need to consider more Hindu concepts such as dharma (duty) and sevā (selfless service). They need to ask themselves, whom are they serving, and what are their duties? Does Welby and his supporters really think that Welby is serving God, and doing his duty of selfless service, by simply driving home HIS truth and railroading victims?
Unfortunately, this is the nature of power. See Hillsborough and many other dreadful and unjust things that get covered up regardless of the extra pain and suffering this causes the already broken and suffering. I could speak similarly about my own suffering around the pandemic and the extra chaos under the incumbent PM at the time who merrily skipped away from it all and was last heard building a £4 million house and being paid a million pounds a year writing some no doubt hilarious jolly wheezes he got involved in.
To say that angers and disgusts me would be to put it extremely mildly indeed.
. . . called the Evangelical leaders of his “tribe” . . .
False top-down ecumenism, the diametric opposite of the honest, normal spiritual moral support that Lloyd-Jones was offering. This explains things I saw from my youth.
The Nash proteges, vaunting that “history would be on their side”, preferred the overtly power crazed Wimber and the empire-builder Wagner.
(I read that Nash, apparently reputed to disdain thought, modelled himself on the dutifulness-obsessed, postmillenialist Torrey, an associate of an industrialised bible institute that had hired a “premium oats” marketer.)
Real Holy Spirit power is of the 1.5 volt sort, that doesn’t crush a bruised reed.
THE ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY website has ‘Statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury 20/05/2021’. It helps me to understand why survivors and victims are so seething, about JW’s lack of full candour in the John Smyth QC tragedy. Multiple cracks have opened up in English-Welsh-Scottish Anglicanism.
Could it next be the turn of the Irish Primate, Archbishop John McDowell, to face calls for him to retire? I saw 2 out of 5 ministry trainee students in my 2015-2016 year group leave Down and Dromore Diocese. Both were disgusted by unfair accusations of sexual misconduct made against them in a foul manner. We were enrolled on a programme overseen by New Wine and St John’s College. A medic, prof, teacher, businessman left the diocese in disgust. Successive Irish Primates and bishops have failed to launch any formal inquiry.
“Any of us might fancy a change of breasts” is what one student reported a tutor as saying to him, as he was allegedly interrogated about possible adultery. That statement, slightly amended, is a good one for Irish Archbishops and Bishops: “Any of us might fancy a change of Bishop or Archbishops”.
A Down and Dromore Diocese parish features in a film about growth and revival. But did the interviewee, Joe Turner, another New Wine programme student, mysteriously vanish before the foreign media group posted the film? Olive Tree Media posted this YouTube film online 30.1.22: ‘Karl Faase interviews Joe Turner for Jesus the Game Changer Season 2’.
Should Archbishop John McDowell be asked to resign, if he cannot give a full public account and explanation, about multiple alleged abuse or sadistic bullying cases being covered up by Bishop David McClay in Down and Dromore Diocese? Bishop McClay has shamefully failed to formally name the late Canon W G Neely as a serial 1970’s Belfast child abuser, in spite of intense media interest following a high profile legal settlement.
How much more abuse or rape or bullying or harassment needs to be uncovered, before Archbishop John McDowell finally convenes a much needed formal and independent inquiry? The stench from Down and Dromore is plain. It is as obvious as the noxious smoke from 12th of July bonfires. The opening scene, in the film with Joe Turner, looks like something from a Hamas promotional video. Is this really how the Irish Primate wants the Anglican Church in Belfast to be portrayed?
Not a long time between 2013 and 2017. What exactly was formally presented to JW in 2013? His 20-5-21 statement sounds limp, if there was quality written witness or victim testimony at his disposal in 2013.
Thank you for all your contributions. I am so sorry for all this suffering we are going through. I continue my prayers for all.
This is a battle we are fighting with truth on our side. What is being hidden and covered up in the church cannot be hidden for ever.
Thanks, Graham, reflection on your statement makes JW’s resignation feel very much less sensible in terms of timing. I start to perhaps better comprehend victim anger or irritation towards JW.
A question comes to mind: might an earlier resignation-nearer the 2013 Ely Diocese disclosure-have facilitated some abrupt and much needed Anglican change for the better?
Why do we bother to have Anglican Archbishops at all, if serious bullying-abuse-harassment can be sealed up at diocesan level? A diocesan safeguarding circus can have as many wallpaper flow charts as the local Bishop wants.
But is protection of VA’s and children mandatory or statutory anyway? And are the public or professionals much more alive to this great evil now? I just wonder how much the protection of over 16’s, students, trainees, junior clergy or adult lay members has really changed in the average Anglican diocese.
Keep up your positive labours! Legalists love endless disputes about words or propositional truths. But the average Anglican is coming to an appreciation of Occam’s razor on Church bullying and abuse concealment. KCJ/DARVO/NDA explain a great deal of it.
Are Archbishops the main ball carrier, when abuse or bullying savagery has been concealed by a diocesan team, but might it suit Archbishops to have dummy runners distracting attention in the local diocese?
Apologies, and meaningful disclosures, should surely come from the very top, where serious crime or abuse has been hidden. I wonder if the JW memoirs (or reflections) do , or will in future, discuss John Smyth.
I have always, as an Irish Anglican, had very high regard for Archbishop Robin Eames. He honestly reflected on the pain a local crisis caused him (‘Drumcree’). He freely discussed a sense of uncertainty, unease, distress and a niggling question about whether he had made the wisest (or best) church leadership decisions on Drumcree.
It could be over-optimistic. But I wonder if JW could offer some deeper and more personal reflections on his handling of the JS material. Human decisions are always much less rational than we imagine. We are essentially creatures of instinct-habit-experiment.
The psychology student handing out real £20 notes to commuters will often get ignored, because people know that’s ‘not how the world works’. An honest sense of how things went wrong in 2013 might be healthy for all parties here.
Sadly, I don’t think Justin Welby is capable of honest or deeper reflection. Nor is he capable of keeping out of the limelight – and that’s a tragedy for him and for the C of E. It also prolongs the torment of survivors, especially Smyth survivors.
‘Naked vicar up tree with stripper and three dead cats’-Tabloids and senior Anglican officials have good reason to like headlines of this type. A great strength of Graham’s articles, is how they point us to deeper truths. Behind lurid headline cases, there is possibly nothing remotely ‘freak’ or ‘historical”.
A sequence of poorly handled long terms events, and a chronic negative culture which has developed, facilitate situations to emerge where the tabloid headline writer gets something astounding to say. An Anglican omertà means cliques have every motivation to be silent before an inquiry begins, and as silent as they can be during an inquiry. Even after an inquiry, the likes of JW and chums could see sense in collective silence.
When we see the lurid headline, about the naked vicar with the stripper up a tree, together with three dead cats, we should question if this is merely the tip of an iceberg, with many more dead cats undiscovered as yet. I did an MA, after a middle life shift from atheism-agnosticism. I was later thrilled to be selected to train as a diocesan evangelist.
But on competing the evangelism course, overseen by New Wine and St John’s Nottingham, I felt excluded from ministry opportunities on account of being “unmarried”. My partner has psoriatic arthritis, and we opted for a celibate relationship many years ago. But a tutor said I was “living in sin” and my presence would “defile a pulpit”. Archdeacon David McClay (now Bishop of Down and Dromore) nonchalantly showed disregard for church rules and contempt for national law.
He blasphemously failed to fairly apply biblical principles of natural justice, when two out of five students faced accusations of sexual misconduct. He was insistent how I needed to get married. He, himself, even offered to marry Helen and I. We saw absolutely nothing funny in a senior Anglican cleric imagining they could coerce us into getting married, as a condition of me being deemed eligible for diocesan positions, or preaching and mission opportunities.
My partner, Helen, a Cambridge-educated professor, was adamant that no vicar would ever pressurise her into getting married. David McClay’s arrogant confidence (how national law, church rules and biblical principles of national justice did not apply to him) helps make sense of other scandals he is failing to fully address. Locals have approached me, and red-flagged concern about the acute disappearance of an evangelist called Joe Turner from St Brendan’s parish in Belfast.
Joe Turner appears in an online promotional film posted 30.1.22. But by that time he appears to have long vanished from St Brendan’s. Locals have asked if another major bullying scandal is being covered up by McClay, and if Joe Turner has been harmed or hurt.
McClay cynically covered up brutal bullying of another ex-New Wine student called Robert Graham. I was one of three professional witnesses, who saw clear evidence of the ill-treatment of Robert Graham. We were all astounded at the way a plain trail of student ill-treatment was covered up by McClay. Protect the Diocese at all costs appears to be McClay’s approach.
A sordid 1970’s child abuse scandal in Belfast has been exposed by the media and a court settlement. The abuser (the late Canon W G Neely) was shifted to Tipperary and had his career rekindled. Yet even now, can Bishop David McClay still not publicly name Canon W G Neely as an abuser, and admit how one of his Bishop predecessors moved Neely to Co Tipperary, after child abuse was discovered?
What we see in the Down and Dromore Diocese is very plain: sinister cover up of child abuse for almost 50 years, multiple ex-New Wine students vanishing on McClay’s watch. Will it take child abuse, suicide, rape, bullying, harassment, or a some combination of these to be discovered, before Bishop David McClay resigns?
My sense is that he was selected for those qualities, by people also possessing similar qualities, to perpetuate the system. Neither will change.
A lot of Freemason halls are closing up. Freemasons probably do a lot of good in terms of friendship, social support and charity. But their profile, for good or ill, fair or unfair, is of a club for men which operates with degrees of secrecy.
That profile is not good for public relations at the minute. Justin Welby has sabotaged the Anglican Church, by not coming a lot cleaner about John Smyth QC and other abuse fiascos. Secrecy underlies KCJ-DARVO-NDA.
Change will come, and we are due a paradigm shift. But it will come very suddenly, as a result of Church member pressure, not via synods or bishops or inquiries. There may be merit just now in a- ‘stay but do not pay’-approach.
A year or two of reduced member contributions could cause ‘Project Spire’ to be reviewed, as well as forcing leaders to take adult protection seriously and consider independent inquiry processes.
Where the stench of abuse concealment is plain, a change of diocese can be a reasonable adjustment. But not everyone can easily do this.
Probably no one will see this, as too long after the blog.
Just to add, not a squeak from Welby or Lambeth. Not a squeak from NST, Lead Bishops, or Keith Makin. They sit there shouting “Blah, Blah, Blah, we are not listening”.
Thirteen years after I came forward about the Smyth abuse, I suppose I should not be surprised.
Hi Graham
The ‘unholy trinity’ KCJ-DARVO-NDA (Kangaroo-Court-Justice, Deny-Attack-Reverse-Victim and Offender, Non-Disclosure Agreement) is getting exposed by the media, plus various reports and the courts. The relative inaction over 10 years is utterly shameful. I cannot fathom why John Smyth did not get a police knock at the door in 2013. Should we avoid overcomplicating what is plain to see? Was listening to a recording of Welby speaking about a ‘head having to roll’. It smacked of Welby seeing himself as a martyr. What BS!
The Anglican Church hierarchy are getting exactly what they deserve…..
James
Because he was a member of the upper middle class establishment of Britain and therefore could not be held to account.
Reading this comes as no surprise really. The problem of organised mainstream Christian faith doesn’t seem to me that much different from politics, business, the law and the judiciary and most institutions that make up modern society. They are almost invariably top down, dominated by the connected and wealthy or by men who play that game. As a practising Christian who merely tries to follow, serve and obey Jesus Christ in my up and down, topsy turvy at times and rather working class life, I have always been puzzled by how much of what passes for organised Christianity, particularly those at the top end resembles more and more the machinations of the Pharisees.
We see power, money, jockeying for position, all kinds of scandals, cover ups and abuse and yet these are the people supposed to be leading us in the name of Christ! Is it any wonder Christianity and Christians get a bad name when these farces are played out by the ‘great and good’ in the ‘church’?!
No offense to any here clinging to mainstream Christianity, but I think those of us who profess a faith in Christ need to think seriously about what is religion and what is it for? Much of the church now seems pageantry and not much more.
I know this is not what Anglicans want to hear or many other denominations but seriously it seems obvious to me that worldly, hierarchical state religion that seems to take the side of the oppressors and the rich and powerful is an anathema and antithesis of everything Christ came for.
Exactly right, Timbo. Today’s theology graduates get reminded at every twist about the merits of Anabaptism and Benedictine spirituality. Sticks, vestments, jewellery and spires do not define New Testament spirituality. “Follow the master, not the pastor. The Church is the people, not the steeple”. That’s how ordinary people in the living Church tell this truth. Protecting staff and buildings, while innocent victims get hurt, is a satanic nightmare.
I think you’re right, James. What option do we have but to keep following Christ in all and any events? I will say a prayer for Justin Welby and the leadership of the CofE and prayers for those broken by it. In the world, it is money and power that makes things go round, for the Christian, it is prayer. Who knows, maybe some of those broken people may get justice. I hope so.