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With the imminent publication of Andrew Graystone’s new book on the Smyth saga, Bleeding for Jesus, we have renewed interest in the story from many, including the Press. The Titus Trust have recently published a timeline of their version of the events in the narrative around responses to Smyth, covering the years 2012 -present. The main feature of their timeline is to show that, even according to their contested account, the trustees of the Titus Trust and others involved with the Iwerne camps were extraordinarily tardy in dealing with the information that was gradually trickling out from 2012 onwards. The fact is that there was, for most of this period after 2012, a dangerous abuser at large, albeit in another part of the world. This fact did not really seem to inspire any sense of real seriousness among those who had the power to do something about it. The Titus Trustees seemed to be anxious above all to establish legal distance from the previous Iwerne charity that ran the camps until 1997. As with the wider Church of England, there was little evidence of urgency to show care and consideration for the victims who were known about. It would appear that, by 2017, at least 22 victims had been identified, but the welfare of these individuals does not appear to have been high on the agenda of the Titus trustees.
This blog piece is unlikely to contain any fresh information, but rather raises some questions that must have occurred to others as they examine this extensive batch of material which is newly revealed in the Titus timeline. In passing, I would suggest that there is up to week’s work just to become familiar with all the Smyth material that has already entered the public domain since the Channel 4 programme in 2017. This is even before the Makin report has been released or Graystone’s book published. Both documents will be required reading for those of us who have tried to follow the story so far.
My role in looking at all this new Smyth material and the role of the organisations involved with him is not to attempt to summarise all the paperwork. Any contribution I can make is to draw to the reader’s attention certain anomalies and questions that stand out in my reading of this material. The first point that needs to be made is that the Titus timeline only covers the period from 2012 to the present. I want to ask questions about the previous period from 1982 to 2012. 1982 was the year when a group of senior evangelical leaders associated with the Iwerne camps were alerted to the violent behaviour of John Smyth against some of those young campers. It was the year when the so-called Ruston Report was compiled, and this established beyond doubt that criminal acts by Smyth had indeed taken place. Various reasons have been offered to explain why the police were not immediately involved. These include the desire of parents to protect their offspring and also the reputation fears of the authorities of Winchester College. The recipients of the Ruston report numbered, I believe, eight people, all of whom were identified by their initials. Some have now died but there were some in active positions of authority within the Iwerne movement well after 1982. They knew what had gone on and later they were to hand on that information to the current generation of trustees responsible for the camps.
The period from 1982 – 2012 is the period that interests me most. Officially in the Iwerne/Titus hierarchy no one needed to admit to knowing anything as no victims had yet come forward to challenge the long thirty year period of silence. The Iwerne/Titus Trust officials could sleep peacefully in their beds. There was no interest in Smyth from safeguarding authorities, and there were no police or lawyers acting on behalf of the victims/survivors. By focussing only on the period after 2012, the Titus timeline is creating a narrative that there was absolutely nothing for anyone to do until victims/survivors began to appear. The argument could also be made that it was precisely this suffocating silence sustained by Titus leaders that aggravated the long-term trauma of Smyth victims. One hopes that Keith Makin will have something to say about this culture of secrecy maintained by Iwerne leaders for so long. The culture of silence has, arguably, had a devastating legacy. Another issue from this period, about which we would like to learn more, is the rationale for transferring all the assets and liabilities from the old Iwerne trustees to the Titus Trust. Nothing I have read suggests that this ‘takeover’ in 1997 was anything other than an attempt to escape the moral and legal obligations of the other older charity.
The next question that I want to consider is to ask who in the years before 2012 knew about the Smyth scandal and could have changed things? There are three groups to consider. One is the group referred to by Anne Atkins in the 2012 Mail piece. This referred to the Smyth affair being shared as a gossip topic at dinner parties. Probably these recipients and purveyors of the gossip could have done very little to change the history of the affair. The telling and retelling of any story countless times, as this one was, probably has the effect of making the actual facts less and less precise. In short, people heard the rumours and the gossip, but they had no solid reliable facts to go on, even if they had had wanted to take it further.
The second group were those who did know the facts. Some of these were officials in the Iwerne network and some had been part of the group who received the Ruston report back in 1982. These included David Fletcher and others involved with Scripture Union. There was in 2000 a handing over of an envelope containing details of the whole affair by Tim Sterry of the SU to a member of Titus trustees. This envelope, which included among its contents a copy of the Ruston Report, would not be opened and read for another 13 years. Outside the Iwerne/SU network, there were a number of prominent wealthy evangelical backers who facilitated the financial aspects of Smyth’s ‘banishment’ to Africa. The enabling of Smyth’s ‘escape’ to Africa was an expensive affair since it required the setting up and financing of a new organisation, Zambesi Ministries. The details of the part of the story is not completely clear and again, one hopes for further clarification from Graystone’s book and the Makin report. The most likely explanation for the official silence about Smyth by senior Iwerne connected officials before 2012, seems to have been a combination of wilful ignorance and a readiness to blank out of consciousness (forget?) inconvenient information.
The period before 2012 also had a further distinct group who knew about Smyth’s criminal activities. These are the victims themselves. I am not about to indulge in any kind of victim blaming as I know enough about the effect of trauma on individuals to understand the extreme reticence of victims in many cases. Trauma often creates repression of memory; the conscious mind may shut it away from recall for decades. But there are questions to be asked of at least two individuals who entered the Anglican ministry and achieved prominence within the organisation. I have in mind two people, both Smyth victims, who later received significant positions of influence in the Church of England. One became Bishop of Guilford and the other Rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate. The latter post is perhaps the most prestigious post in the Anglican con-evo world. Both these individuals appear on the surface to have found a way through whatever trauma they may have suffered as young men at the hands of Smyth. Their periods of prominence within the CofE certainly began before 2012 (2008 and 1998 respectively) and both were then in a position to do something on behalf of other victims during the silent period. I leave it to my reader to answer this question. If you are an important part of the leadership structure of a large organisation and you know of horrors committed against innocents within it, do you not have a moral obligation to share this information with appropriate people? Is not sharing information with others who can put a stop to such depravity a moral obligation for a Christian leader? William Taylor in particular was in close working relationship with everyone of influence within the con-evo Anglican world before and after his appointment to the top job at St Helen’s. The Bishop of Guilford from the time he was appointed as a suffragan bishop, would have had privileged access to safeguarding professionals locally and nationally. They could have advised him on what to do in facing up to safeguarding events from his personal past.
The answer to my question that I ask of these two Smyth survivors may well be answered by the phenomenon we have met many times before – misplaced loyalty to the systems and the institutions that reared you. We end up in a place we have been on numerous occasions. We are in the place of conflicting loyalties. We do not know which loyalty has the greater claim on our conscience. The sphere of Church leadership seems to place individuals far too often in this impossible place. It is not surprising that many Church leaders wish fervently to lay down the burdens of their leadership responsibilities in exchange for the peace and tranquillity of retirement