John Smyth, whose career of sadistic assaults on young males lasted more than 50 years, got away with this partly because he moved across frontiers. As someone who has lived many years in Southern Africa, I read the recent news about him with increasing questions. How was he able to continue with his horrific practices there? Was this another instance of imperial cynicism, exporting our misfits to former colonies?
Smyth was operating under the guise of Christian leadership. There are strong Christian links between England and Southern Africa, specifically within the Anglican communion. So how is it he was not stopped sooner?
The Church of England commissioned an independent report only in 2019, led by Keith Makin. Published a few months ago, it is a copious report of some 249 pages using the testimony of victims. It divides the material into an account of what occurred in various epochs of the abuser’s career, and then further analyses this with the purpose of ‘lessons learnt’, in other words preventative safeguards for the future.
Evangelism as a cover for abuse
John Smyth was a Canadian who studied law at Cambridge, qualifying as a barrister in 1965, and as a QC, in 1979. His most famous cases were those he undertook for Mary Whitehouse, who was leading campaigns against ‘moral filth’, that is against sexually liberal values, especially in the media. Meanwhile, he was himself a dangerous pervert who used the cover of evangelical Christian networks, to promote his notion of ‘bleeding for Christ’, which involved him beating the backsides of his victims until they bled.
He was able to make contact with his victims through his status in the Iwerne Trust, which had been set up in 1933 under the auspices of the Scripture Union, to strengthen evangelical Christianity in England through nurturing future leaders while they were still at school or in university, via Bible study groups and summer camps. As these leaders were expected to come from the ranks of pupils at the prominent fee-paying schools, Iwerne had a list of about 30 such schools in which it operated. One of these was Winchester College.
Smyth bought a house nearby in the 1970s. In 1974 he gained access to the school’s Christian groups and was readily allowed to invite favoured schoolboys to his house, where they would have lunch with his wife and children before they were individually invited to a soundproof shed in the garden for the ritual beatings. There were at least 16 victims from Winchester College, and another nine from other schools, so a total of 26-30 victims in England during this period of 1977-1982.
At first, I could not believe that someone apparently so normal, with a wife and young children and a successful career could be such an abuser. Sadly, it later emerged that he had been abusing his own children too, especially his son. His wife, Anne, was aware of what was going on. She even offered nappies for bleeding backsides. His son’s testimony is that the family were dominated by his father and his mother did not have the power to resist. She was in collusion, in the know, but eventually the police did not charge her. She was a victim too.
Early failures
Why weren’t the police alerted much earlier, when evidence had been gathered by Reverend Mark Ruston after a victim alerted him at the beginning of 1982? It has been pointed out that the timeline of safeguarding policies within the Church of England begins some years after this, in 1988. Corporal punishment was still legal at the time. It was banned in state schools from 1986, and in private schools in 1998. However, Ruston was sufficiently worried by the victims’ testimony to seek legal advice. He noted that the 1861 law on Offences against the Person, and section 15 of the 1956 Sexual Offences Act might apply.
He did not go to the police. His report was shared with a small inner circle of seven evangelical Christians, including David Fletcher who was employed by the Scripture Union to run the Iwerne camps. The Makin report sums it up: “ … all decision-making during this period regarding investigating and responding to the abuse was ‘managed’ by a group of men that included ordained Clergy and prominent Evangelicals” and “our firm conclusion is that a serious crime was covered up”.
The main reason for the cover-up appears to be what might be termed protecting the brand. Winchester College, the Iwerne Trust and evangelical leaders in the church have been accused of assisting in the “cover up”. A rationale for doing this was that the victims did not want publicity. Winchester reported four sets of parents wanted to keep things quiet, but the Makin report could only find two, while another set of parents wanted the authorities to know.
Meanwhile, informally, the secret was being spread, and some people were being warned about Smyth’s behaviour, for instance David Jackman, leader of an evangelical (non-Anglican) congregation in Southampton which Smyth had joined. Ruston and Fletcher were trying in vain to get Smyth to sign up to conditions to stay away from his victims. Alan Martin, director of the Scripture Union, argued to colleagues that Smyth should be urged to seek professional help. John Eddison, employed by the Scripture Union as secretary for private schools, wrote to Fletcher that “it would be advisable for him [Smyth] to leave the country for a while”, later suggesting this to Smyth himself.
Smyth found the opportunity to do just that when, at an evangelical conference in Amsterdam in 1983, he was encouraged to join African Enterprise, an evangelical mission led by a South African, Michael Cassidy. Smyth, aided by Michael Cassidy, formed the Zambesi Trust (UK charity number 326752) to raise funds for his mission, and moved with his family to Zimbabwe in January 1984. Michael Cassidy was warned against this by the British evangelicals, and even sent a copy of the Ruston report, but replied that arrangements were too far advanced to change.
Removal to Southern Africa
In Zimbabwe, Smyth was able to restart similar operations. Through the private schools, he would recruit boys for holiday camps at which he abused them. As concerns about his behaviour grew, the British trustees of the Zambesi Trust resigned in 1989, but he was still able to raise funds, notably through support from a new trustee, Sir Jamie Colman, the wealthy heir to the mustard firm. Both Colman and his wife the Reverend Sue Colman have stepped back from their ecclesiastical duties following the revelations about Smyth.
During this time in Zimbabwe, Smyth abused possibly as many as 80 across the 18 years he was there, including one 16-year-old boy, Guide Nyachuru, who died. With his dominant personality, he was able to free-wheel beyond control of formal church structures or organisations. The Makin report comments “this was history repeating itself – people finding extreme difficulty in agreeing how to control a known abuser, whist leaving control in the hands of the abuser”.
Some Zimbabwean parents took their concerns to a Bulawayo-based lawyer, David Coltart. He gathered testimony from victims and eventually a case against Smyth was brought to Harare High Court in 1997, but it was never concluded because the wily Smyth gained influence inside government, possibly with President Robert Mugabe himself. In mid-2001, Smyth handed over the Zambesi Trust to someone else, and left Zimbabwe for Durban, South Africa.
There he still used the cloak of Christianity: he joined the Glenridge evangelical church (not Anglican) and got himself appointed as the new national director for the Christian lawyers’ association, a post he was removed from once the Ruston and Coltart dossiers were read by his colleagues. John and his wife then moved to Bergvliet, Cape Town in 2004. For a short while. they worshipped at the Anglican church there before joining an evangelical (not Anglican) congregation of Church-on-Main nearer the centre of town in 2005. He was also still active within some legal circles.
The Makin report recommends further testimony is gathered in Southern Africa. It is unknown if Smyth continued to abuse when in Cape Town. His former practice of utilising Bible study groups to groom victims could have worked there too. Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Cape Town points out in a recent press statement that after 2005, Smyth had no formal contact with the Anglican church until a short time before his death in 2018 when he asked to worship at Bergvliet again.
The demand for justice
Meanwhile, the matters were moving in Britain, mainly because, under the new structures set up for safeguarding in the Church of England, more victims were emerging with testimonies. Justin Welby, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, was informed formally in 2013, although on the evidence in the Makin report, he almost certainly knew about the scandal way back. He moved in the same evangelical circles.
The victims themselves were pushing for more action within the church. Police were alerted, in various counties. One victim, in particular, was very insistent that action should be taken to stop an abuser who might be continuing to abuse in South Africa. Following a Channel 4 documentary screened in 2017, it seemed that police were about to have Smyth extradited back to the UK for trial.
Smith died suddenly of a heart attack in July 2018 before that could happen. It is likely that he killed himself by taking an overdose of blood pressure pills, but there was no inquest. Almost all the other people who took decisions in the 1980s that allowed Smyth to move to Southern Africa are now also deceased.
Safeguarding lessons to be learnt
The main purpose of the Makin report is to highlight where better systems and responses to this type of abuse can be implemented. Readers might ponder whether not only evangelical Christianity but many types of fervent groups that attract young people could be vulnerable to such abusers. Traditional institutions, such as the Church of England and universities, are large enough to have established structures for safeguarding. But novel groups spring up all the time. The fact that they are active beyond the reach of the traditional structure is part of their appeal: they are the new life while the older institution is dead wood. That makes it easier for them to be penetrated by perverts, exactly as Smyth did with the mission camps and congregations in Southern Africa that were not in fact part of the Anglican Communion, as Makgoba pointed out.
UK laws have been tightened up so that anyone in a teaching position, even a voluntary one, is required to get a DBS certificate (disclosure and barring service) which basically is a police check of no previous record of sexual or other offences.
My worry is whether this operates well across international frontiers. South Africa now operates something similar in pre-employment checks, but that may not work well with volunteers. Brexit means that UK police lost easy access to EU police data.
Any system of regulation only works as well as the resources and effort put into it. One of the reasons the UK police gave for not catching up with Smyth sooner after 2013 is simply that their resources were overwhelmed with the work connected with cases against Jimmy Saville and others in the wake of improved legislation about safeguarding.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article, help is available from the following organisations:
NAPAC – supporting recovery from childhood abuse
Refuge, the largest UK domestic abuse organisation for women and children
Domestic violence and abuse – getting help – Citizens Advice
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