Today, February 1, is the second anniversary of the Channel 4 programme about the John Smyth scandal. In many ways this scandal remains the greatest open wound among Anglican abuse scandals that has yet to heal. What went on in a hut in a Winchester garden between 1979 and 1981 has never been properly resolved. Although Smyth acted alone, the way that his actions involved so many others, victims and supporters, is mind-blowing. Although his behaviour was not actively condoned by anyone else, the networks he belonged to allowed him to escape scrutiny and justice for the rest of his life. Those who passively supported Smyth have also been allowed to escape questioning. Although the extent of exactly who knew about his nefarious activities is in dispute, it is apparent that a whole tranche of well-connected Christian individuals did know what was going on. These people are in some cases still alive, but they have never been questioned in a formal way. The common denominator was a link with the camps at Iwerne Minster. Smyth had been chairman of the trustees for these camps, so he would have known and been known by everyone active in this network at the time. As has been stated on various occasions in this blog and elsewhere, the camps at Iwerne in Dorset brought together, as participants or supporters, a wealthy elite within the evangelical world. To this day the Titus Trustees continue this same work, the task of evangelising a privileged sector of English society, public school boys.
When the scandal of John Smyth’s behaviour broke with the screening of the Channel 4 programme, everyone expected that there would be a full enquiry about what had been revealed. While the probing eyes of IICSA have been allowed to dig deep into the Chichester Diocese and the Peter Ball affair, no such enquiry has been conducted into the affair of John Smyth. When Smyth died in August last year, a press release from the C/E safeguarding bishop, Peter Hancock, was released. He stated that ‘It is important now that all those organisations linked with this case work together to look at a lessons learned review, whilst continuing to offer formal and informal support to those who have come forward as survivors.’ The promised enquiry (and the support for survivors) seems to have vanished into thin air. One of the problems may be that the Titus Trustees, who maintain fierce independence from the wider church when it suits them, may simply have refused to cooperate. There was also a statement from Archbishop Welby which expressed an unequivocal apology for the role which the Church of England played in this deplorable affair. We might have expected that somewhere in the past two years some practical steps would be taken to begin to put right the appalling legacy of Smith’s toxic behaviour. But that does not appear to have happened.
There are believed to be at least 20 Smyth victims in Britain at this time. Based on the comments made on Twitter by one of them, Archbishop Welby has not met with any of them personally. I am not here going to get into the argument about how much the Archbishop himself knew of the activities of Smyth before it came into the public domain; even if he did not, it is quite clear that there was a serious conspiracy of silence among many other leading evangelicals in England about the whole matter. This cover-up and denial have exacerbated the pain of Smyth’s victims. Simultaneously a necessary challenge to the corrupt culture within evangelicalism which allowed Smyth’s toxic beliefs to flourish, has never been properly aired.
What could have happened in the past two years to make the Smyth episode resolve itself in some way rather than fester like a tank of stagnant water? I have a few suggestions.
- The Church of England even though it was not responsible for Smyth in a formal way, should, in the spirit of Welby’s apology, hold an enquiry. This would allow the questioning of key witnesses to establish who knew what and when. Several of the members of Smyth’s network which drew up the Ruston report in 1982 are still alive and none have given any public account of what they knew. The ability of Smyth to flee to Africa subsequently and be financially sustained by a group of wealthy evangelical sponsors, especially the Coleman family, needs to be properly explored.
- The second area, which needs to be explored by an enquiry, is the aberrant theology which undergirded Smyth’s behaviour. The biblical quotations with which Smyth intimidated his victims need to be understood. If there are still any evangelicals who believe such things as painful chastisement being of spiritual benefit, let them come forward and argue these extraordinary notions. If they disagree with these ideas, then that also needs to be heard. We need to know in 2019 that such toxic ideas about suffering and salvation have no place even in the darkest places of the Christian imagination. By allowing Smyth to flee the country and by sending considerable sums of money to support him, parts of the evangelical establishment seem never to have distanced themselves from him and his ideas right up to the time of his death. We need to understand more fully what this long-term support of Smyth by prominent and wealthy evangelicals implies about their own involvement in this dark area of Christian history.
- The third area of action that is needed is for the Titus Trustees to accept some responsibility for the care and support of those who suffered so grievously as the consequence of the incompetence of their predecessors on the Iwerne Trust. It has been noted that the Titus Trustees have control over considerable sums of money. They should be shamed into making a substantial contribution to the psychological welfare of Smyth’s victims. If they do not, their future work and the work of the Iwerne camps will be permanently tainted by their historic association with the activities of John Smyth. Is that what they really want to hand on to the next generation of their campers whom they hope to influence in the future?
Two years have passed since the Channel 4 programme and we are still waiting for some movement to take place. We look to the Titus Trustee as inheritors of the Iwerne tradition or to the Church of England, some of whose members helped to promote Smyth and his dangerous ideology. If nothing is done, one wonders how peace can ever return to the Church. There is still a bitter legacy to be addressed – a legacy involving brutal physical abuse, inflicted in the name of a corrupt theology. We are still waiting for the process of healing to begin.
There is, of course, healing to be done. Recompense, too. And change. But I have never really noticed that those with power in the church care about such things! Don’t hold your breath, Stephen!
The powers of denial and repression are potent ones.
“He was an aberrant leader. We didn’t know. He’s gone now. He’s nothing to do with us now. Of course we would never condone what he got up to. No permanent damage done. That was then.”
You can well imagine the above dismissal comments, uttered quickly and then they move on.
From time to time a Channel 4 or a Victoria Derbyshire will come along and expose the cancer at the heart of the establishment and create a big splash. Victims and survivors will grasp a sudden hope that something will change, that their suffering will be heard, that it might end even.
But somehow inevitably not much changes.
In fact there are changes. Tens of thousands of decent people gradually walk away from these churches, and quietly never return. The decline in church membership is well documented. That it is gradual and not a tsunami exodus is potentially far more destructive to the Established Churches.
Isolated success stories of (well funded) plants and growth initiatives sometimes obscure the overall decline.
Powerful organisations have powerful ideology. The attached theology is actually secondary. Changing this will make no difference to the power and followership bases.
People commit to a lifetime of devotion to the ideal. One aberrant leader isn’t going to change that. It’s human. It’s what we do. What we also do is wall off trauma. It forms an inaccessible abscess deep within.
Omertà. Shut down. Silence.
That silence is largely driven unconscious, out of memory. Attempts by outsiders to lance the boil of hidden crime have largely failed. Because the sheer weight of human commitment maintains the status quo.
A deep wound however well covered over has never properly healed. Survivors will remain, but suffer; their families too.
Unconscious organisations make unconscious mistakes. Another leader’s abuse gets overlooked. More victims. More decline. The return of the repressed.
We need to be generous people to welcome the emerging survivors, clergy, laity, everyone. Let’s remember not to replace dogma with more dogma, but overcome evil with good.
If we can’t change the organisation from outside, and I don’t believe we can, let’s do what we can do with those who suffer.
Thank you Steve for this helpful statement. When past issues in a human family are not owned up to, it has a corrosive effect on relationships. The Church of England feels now like a dysfunctional family, full of secrets that no one wants to speak about. The children of such a family leave and don’t come back. If a family remains a place of honesty where you are known, accepted and loved then it has an important part to play in a person’s well-being right up to the moment of death. When the church continues to ‘forget’ uncomfortable truths from the past, there will always be bloggers and others to remind them that the secrets must be told if health is to return. It is often said that ‘belonging’ is the most important part of church membership. How can you belong to an organisation afflicted by dishonesty and cover-ups and not feel some discomfort at the heart of things?
David Fletcher worked for the Scripture Union when he was Chairman of the Ewerne Trust. I understand that even if Titus Trust, the legal successors to the Ewerne Trust are trying to wash their hands of the whole affair, Scripture Union is currently undertaking a review.
Thank you Anon for this piece of information. It is good to know that someone somewhere is doing something about the scandal. The question of the involvement of the Fletcher brothers seems to come up regularly in the documents on the affair. Thank you for confirming that the Titus lot are trying to wash their hands of the matter. That is the message coming from my sources. It is hard to see how the schools who have traditionally backed the Iwerne enterprise will want to continue their involvement as long the sewage in the back yard has not been cleaned out. I would not be surprised to hear that the chaplains start to recommend to their headmasters a withdrawal of support.
However – many chaplains were already opposed. The school link to Iwerne/Titus would typically be the master(s) who ran the CU, not the chaplain.
The late Jeremy Hardy once said: ‘I was raised in the Church of England. I can’t say I’m lapsed. You can’t really lapse if you’re an Anglican. You don’t lose your faith, you just can’t remember where you left it.’
Thinking of “leavers”, those who leave the family of the church, I was thinking of a complementary analysis to the one marketing people use for “adopters”.
I’m usually a late adopter. I bought an iPhone 4 when the 6 was released.
Some early leavers are sensitive souls. The first whiff of a dodgy new leader and they’re off. Perhaps they’re just stroppy. But as time goes on and more and more people leave, eventually you are left with 2 types of people: those who will never leave and those who pretend not to leave.
Pretenders step away from their various ministry roles but “we’ll still be coming to the church”. But they gradually vanish.
However we leave or stay, the conflict we feel over the sometimes very serious problems there niggles away at us at a deep level.
By saying or doing nothing, we are complicit. It’s an ugly truth. Many of us were brought up with a biblically enforced antithesis to speaking out in critique of leadership, for fear of being critical. Honest leaders could help us by welcoming feedback.
Yes, how do we live with ourselves for the bad things that have gone on under our very noses?
The good men who say nothing are always the problem. There are only a few bullies. There are always only a few bullies. But those who let it happen are many. Is it nothing to you all ye who pass by?
As the executor of a recently deceased academic who was victim to sexual abuse at an Angican theological college in the 1950s, I would like to put on record how those experiences influenced his life, career and personal relationships up to is death.
He gave up a cherished desire for ordination, became a reclusive academic finding it difficult to make and maintain friendships. He was a cultured, incredibly well-read but damaged soul whose religious faith never recovered.
He would never have wished , nor was there opportunity, to re open the case – the perpetrator has long since died, but having known him for 45 years, I think it important to acknowledge the long term effects of such evil exploitation of innocence.
When this subject last surfaced on the ‘Thinking Anglicans’ site, we were told that survivors were making claims against the Titus Trust and had instructed solicitors, thus triggering the Civil Pre-Action Protocols. Arguably the matter then became sub judice. I haven’t seen any further announcements, and one assumes that the claims are ongoing unless there have been settlements subject to confidentiality agreements.
Stephen, you speak of ‘the involvement of the Fletcher brothers’ as something that comes up regularly in the documents. David Fletcher was already well-known to have *led* the Iwerne camps from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s, so the idea that ‘involvement’ is anything notable misunderstands the situation.
Stephen, you identify the problem when you say: “The Church of England even though it was not responsible for Smyth in a formal way, should, in the spirit of Welby’s apology, hold an enquiry.” You add: “This would allow the questioning of key witnesses to establish who knew what and when.” The difficulty is that such an inquiry would have no power to compel any witness to attend or answer any question. IICSA has such powers, as it was set up as a statutory inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, but I don’t see any appetite to add a ‘Smyth’ strand to its already full agenda.
Anthony Archer has stated (in a comment on ‘Thinking Anglicans’ following Smyth’s death last August) that there should be a ‘Smyth’ inquiry with powers to compel witnesses to attend and to require the production of documents, but this would need a statutory inquiry, set up by a Minister under the 2005 Act. Section 1 provides: “(1) A Minister may cause an inquiry to be held under this Act in relation to a case where it appears to him that— (a) particular events have caused, or are capable of causing, public concern, or (b) there is public concern that particular events may have occurred.” I doubt that there is sufficient general public concern about Smyth to persuade David Lidlington (and I think it would be he as Minister of the Cabinet Office) to establish such an inquiry.
However, in view of Bishop Peter Hancock’s statement following Smyth’s death (referred to in your post), I should not be surprised if questions were asked of the bishop at General Synod later this month. There are also bound to be questions in the aftermath of the Briden Report (published on 24 January 2019) finding that the new allegations against the late Bishop George Bell (received as long ago as December 2017) are “unfounded” and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s equivocal statement in response to the report. (The Q&A session is at not later than 5.45 pm on Wednesday 20th February.)
Thank you David for your comments. The question of legal compulsion being placed on the church should not really arise. Any church wanting to retain the loyalty of its followers should always want to be seen to be ‘doing the right thing’ regardless of external compulsion. The post was written as a mark of solidarity to the survivors of this particular horror who feel extremely let down by protestations by senior people in the Church that there were going to be ‘lessons learned’. If they want to hide behind legal protection, then it would more transparent if they would come out and say it rather than hoping that the whole thing is going to be hidden for ever in the long grass. The contribution from Angusian reminds us why for some nothing about abuse, whether physical, sexual or emotional, will ever be forgotten by survivors. They deserve better than being part of a political game being played by church leaders.
Yes, we shouldn’t forget the real people involved. Thanks Angusian, and agreed Rowland.
I know that talk of client confidentiality and terms like ‘sub judice’ seem legalistic and perhaps even a little heartless in the context of the horrors of child abuse, but they are the reality of any claim which finds its way to the Courts. This has been a hotly-argued subject in the current debates about Bishop Bell. It’s difficult sometimes to strike the balance which one would personally wish was possible, but I must say that I was moved to read Angusian’s contribution and your response.
I struggle to believe that theology has any part in this. If John Smyth truly believed that what he was doing had theological value his daughter, even if not involved, would not have been so shielded from his thinking because it would have been part of the family dynamics. Telling his daughter that she was forbidden to even enter the garden when the parties went on is about secrecy not theology. Even though Smyth’s daughter loved her father she maintained that he needed to face justice if the allegations were true because she would not have liked that to have happened to her child, so there is no evidence of an indoctrinated theology in her.
I think linking the behaviour of Smyth to theology offers an excuse for it, what went on was actual bodily harm and was illegal, no other defence should be given.
Smyth had several daughters; one gave a short BBC interview which may be what you’re referring to. She didn’t discuss her father’s theology at all, nor give any rationale for the beatings, because she didn’t know about them. She was kept away from the Iwerne boys. I’m not sure she or the others would want to be drawn into this discussion. The relationship between theology and behaviour is a complicated one. I have frequently heard evangelicals quote Prov. 13:24 ‘Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them’ (NIV) to justify hitting or beating children. The evangelical James Dobson has written a number of books on the need to strongly discipline children. That doesn’t mean that all evangelicals take beatings to the extreme that Smyth did, but it certainly gives a rationale to violence. If Proverbs had said ‘Whoever hits their children displeases God, and the one who beats their children does not love them’, it would have been much more difficult for church leaders (like my father, for instance) to get away with it.
I have read an account by a Smyth survivor and he is very clear that Smyth used Scripture to justify the beatings. That is extremely damaging, and my heart goes out to them.
Evangelicals aren’t the only ones to beat children and young people of course. Peter Ball, an Anglo-Catholic, did it too but used different pretexts. There are people at both Anglo-Catholic and Evangelical extremes of the Church who have glorified violence and suffering. Sometimes they have themselves grown up with that attitude and it’s ingrained; others may gravitate to an extreme wing because the severity attracts them.
And some of us grew up with it, came to realise it was unhealthy, and have escaped – thank God.
I have tried to avoid making any specific comments about this case, but the very obvious one which never seems to be mentioned is that John Smyth was a QC (or became one at around the time of these events) and would have been well aware that these were criminal assaults on minors. No ‘justification’ is real or possible either in theology or as a matter of law.
It needs to be repeated and emphasised that a parent and, formerly, a school teacher acting in loco parentis could lawfully administer reasonable corporal punishment on a child. There was also judicial corporal punishment of children and adults. In all other circumstances ‘corporal punishment’ was, and is, a criminal assault. There is no such thing as the ‘victim’ consenting to being ‘disciplined’ in this way.
Corporal punishment by teachers has been totally abolished, and judicial corporal punishment for even longer.
’Spare the rod and spoil the child’ would have availed parents, who still have a very limited right which does not extend to beating a child – perhaps a smack which doesn’t result in bruising.
In all other circumstances it is illegal.
Personal comments made against other contributors are not acceptable and will be removed. I have removed comments made today which could be wrongly construed. Please speak about issues and do not make any comments that can be taken personally by someone else.