There is one point overlooked (understandably, given the density of the report) in Andrew Brown’s excellent articles. Page 176 of the report, 4th Sept 2013: the police sergeant in Cambridgeshire expressed the view that a formal complaint should probably be made in Hampshire (not Cambs) as it was, literally, the scene of the crime. Moreover she offered to check with her superiors and report back to Yvonne Quirk. I do not recall seeing the follow-up advice to Ely diocese on this point, although I may have missed a later mention. If the police themselves were unsure what to do or… Read more »
I forgot the Hampshire angle. That’s my excuse. By the time I came to write the piece up I was more puzzled by why Yvonne Quirk had also talked to Chichester, as Makin clearly says, without offering any explanation. James Stileman, then COO Titus Trust, later Gafcon, handed over a dossier containing the full Ruston report with the victims’ names redacted to the Met for attention of the Hampshire police in at the end of September 2014. This was two months before he first told Andrew Graystone of the problem. (Makin timeline pp 177-178). “Victim” refused all contact with the… Read more »
After Ely took the right steps initially in 2013 after being informed, from then until 2017 it all looks more like a vile game of pass-the-unwanted-parcel with the music stopping whenever it got back to Ely.
Cambridgeshire Police, South Africa, Lambeth .. all of them essentially replied to Ely, ‘Thanks for the heads-up, we’ll let you deal with it. ‘
As for Chichester: perhaps Yvonne Quick was looking for advice, after the Safeguarding problems they had dealt with in recent years?
Not really. Ely diocese had no jurisdiction over the police or the church in South Africa. They reported Smyth and followed up but had no power to force them to act.
As for Lambeth Palace, the same people who criticise the increased centralisation in the C of E are complaining that Welby didn’t micromanage Ely diocese safeguarding!
Well done to Andrew Brown for setting out the facts.
It’s of interest that the Makin report makes no reference to the disclosure of Smyth’s abuse in Zimbabwe by cricketer Henry Olonga in his book, suitably—or ironically—titled Blood, Sweat and Treason [first published in 2010, longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2010, and reviewed in the 2011 Wisden at pages 125-126], albeit that Olonga did not name Smyth as the abuser. Necessarily, the book majors on Olonga’s public stand in 2003 against the murderous Mugabe regime, which forced him to flee the country and escape with his life but, having referred to his becoming a Christian… Read more »
AP put Conway onto the story. It is mentioned in Conway’s first letter to Cape Town, as reproduced by Makin, but without your detail. See footnote 6 of my long post.
Thank you, Andrew for that reference. In the light of this reference to Henry Olonga’s book by Bishop Conway in his letter of 1 August 2013 (the title of which, incidentally, was wrongly cited by Conway as Blood, Sweat and Tears), it is surprising that Makin, who is all too ready to say that Justin Welby ‘could have been more curious‘ about the remark about Smyth made to him by Peter Sertin in Paris in 1981 [see report para 16.9 on page 223] and to criticise Welby, Bishop Bailey Wells, and Conway for their ‘distinct lack of curiosity‘ after August… Read more »
Simon Dawson
1 month ago
It seems to me that Andrew Brown, alongside many other journalists, is focusing on the least important of two different issues. The first question is the personal responsibility of either York or Canterbury for taking action, or not, at various occasions when they may have heard of Smyth’s actions a few decades ago. Did they get it right, and is this a resigning issue? The second question is the corporate or institutional responsibility of the two archbishops in leading the Church of England’s management of safeguarding, and especially their work leading the Archbishops’ Council over the past 10 years. Did… Read more »
Well, there we disagree. All talk about “leading the governance” seems to me a fantasy. The Church of England is not an organisation. It’s not even, really, a network of organisations. Pretending that it is cannot lead to good outcomes. I know that the thrust of policy ever since George Carey has been to turn it into one and that Justin Welby came closer than anyone else to success. A fat lot of good it did him, and not much good to anyone else. The first question of your questions is about real people whose acts and omissions can be… Read more »
Thanks Andrew. I am happy to agree to disagree. But on one point of clarity. I do agree with you that the Church of England is a disjointed network of independent structures, and so talk of Governance needs to be nuanced. But my concern is specifically with the work of the Archbishops’ Council, right at the centre of this network, and surely the two Archbishops must be responsible here for a committee that they chair. There has been much discussion on the TA blog about the work of the Council, and the problems with it’s lack of transparency, it’s resistance… Read more »
Which I think reveals another dimension. When scraping below the surface, a lot of the real reason for demanding a resignation is not related to Makin specifically. The narrative on the media has been “the Archbishop covered it up – if you cover it up that’s like being part of the abuse so he has to go, maybe he should be fired!” Except he didn’t – – – But dig deeper and it’s really the associated / linked matters with safeguarding that mean people want him gone. In your case the work of the Council. Fair enough to think that… Read more »
And yet the two archbishops felt that they had the influence to persuade the Bishop of Newcastle to grant Sentamu a PTO. I think that’s a vital piece of evidence which shows how things work in practice.
“The Church of England is not an organisation. It’s not even, really, a network of organisations. Pretending that it is cannot lead to good outcomes.” No – – but I am becoming more and more convinced that it should/must become one. Those at the “top” (or rather what is seen to be the top) are held to account “as-if” it was an organisation by those outside the Church; and that’s not going to change. I think an awful lot of good could come from this. Most of the arguments for the disconnected-church seem to be based on historical (it has… Read more »
This is why ‘the church’ has al least 40-odd different ways/ procedures etc of ‘safeguarding’ and more than that number of bishops, archdeacons, teams as ‘overheads’ (‘support?) above the folk at the coalface. Perhaps such things may be linked?
In passing, it has added to confusion in the public mind by creating bishops with similar or identical titles to those already adopted by the Roman Catholic church, eg Bishop of Leeds.
Perhaps this is the time to resurrect Tony Benn’s famous five questions, which I have quoted more than once to TA.
“What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”
These might be interesting questions to ask various people in and around the Archbishops’ council and Church House.
Hmm, careful what you wish for, and unintended outcomes. Charism in the CofE seems to me to come from independent outliers, not the conformists. Oxford Movement, Evangelical Revival etc. A tighter, more controlled organisation might be neater and safer, but perhaps smaller and blander.
But being a singular legal-entity shouldn’t necessarily have stopped those.
I was envisaging an organisation with formally delegated responsibilities (within some limits) – – so Vicars would still be in charge of who preaches in their church for example….
Interested Observer
1 month ago
I think those are very powerful articles, especially the second (“Against Makin”). It is obviously bad the opportunities were missed to bring Smyth to belated justice once his activities became more widely known after 2013. But neither the Church of England nor any particular UK police force would have any locus to do much more than report — to whom? — suspicions. There’s no particular reason to believe an investigation in South Africa would have got any further than it did in England, especially with no access to witnesses and documents of the crimes that took place here. We know… Read more »
Doug Chaplin
1 month ago
I’ve always enjoyed Andrew’s commentary as an invitation to look behind the media curtain and discover the Wizard of Oz is rather different from the common perception. His comments on this story are a reminder to exercise our critical faculties in the face of an apparent but dubious consensus.
+Justin’s resignation had an air of ‘taking one for the team’ about it (Caiaphas, lacking the benefit of football cliches, might have advised it ‘expedient that one man should die for the people’). I put off signing the petition because I was unsure of my motives: the managerial culture, favouring church plants over parishes, stopping priests offering Eucharist in their churches during lockdown. All this and, yes, getting caught up in the consensus – dubious or otherwise in this case. In the end, I did sign ‘for the good of all his Church’, but aware too of the ambiguities and… Read more »
NJW
1 month ago
I realise that the responsibilities of a bishop are greater than those of a parish priest, but… As a parish priest, I have to say that if I had received a disclosure and then passed that on to safeguarding professionals who had, in turn reported it to the police on my behalf, I would probably have thought that I had undertaken my immediate obligations. If I had then been told by the police that (on the basis of the information I had available and had provided) this was not a criminal act, and therefore couldn’t be treated as such –… Read more »
Last edited 1 month ago by NJW
Rerum novarum
1 month ago
One practical point springs out of these events but is not highlighted by the report, namely the need for a review of youth work by the church and associated organisations. The best way of stopping this happening again would be to change church education. Young people can learn about the faith in ways that are both more critical and more creative. Regardless of whether we are conservative or liberal, questions about Christianity and its founder are best approached openly, tolerantly, thoughtfully, hopefully and informedly. Reframing youth work like that would provide some immunisation for young people against the events described… Read more »
“Rerum novarum” is such a good name, given the nature of the comments you make. I hope the ideas RN raises here really get some traction. Although I am sure some resignations are appropriate, the real answer to the crisis will only come with a transformation in ways of thinking. Real catharsis and healing will come through purging the Church of bad theology, not simply losing a couple of bishops or archbishops “pour encourager les autres”. And besides, encouraging critical, rational thinking amongst young people in so many spheres of life has surely never been more important. Just look at… Read more »
“encouraging critical, rational thinking amongst young people in so many spheres of life has surely never been more important” Gosh, I couldn’t agree more. And the shocker is that there’s a large section of the church that works actively against that, whereas if we are seekers of the truth we should be at the vanguard. But are we? “Liberal” is a word with different meanings. In the church context it’s often understood as a subjectively preferred emphasis, As if being liberal or conservative were equally valid choices. But a “liberal education” (what University used to be about) is about being… Read more »
Not sure it’s timid thinking, Nigel. Quite a bold claim that God’s self-disclosure is to be discerned in a specific Canon of text. But one that is made by equally rational and critical minds, and has been made by Christians consistently throughout history. Minds critical of the (superstitious?) enlightenment thinking that human reason unaided by revelation is competent to determine truth. Minds rational enough to perceive that any epistemological framework rests on some kind of faith-filled assumption about what rationality looks like. Rational minds which make the rational decision (given the resurrection) to look to Jesus as revelation of God’s… Read more »
Thankyou for engaging with this thought. “Minds rational enough to perceive that any epistemological framework rests on some kind of faith-filled assumption about what rationality looks like.“ Agreed, but the question is: do those assumptions and that framework remain open to critique and revision? That requires intellectual courage. I agree that it is ‘bold’ to believe certain unbelievable things! The question, it seems to me, is whether we are open to questioning our own beliefs or whether we are too fearful to do so- because it’s certainly uncomfortable to have to modify one’s beliefs, both as individuals and, even more,… Read more »
Thanks for raising the issue of assumptions v. critique and reason. The delineation matters when it comes to a consideration of scandals and harms in the churches ( Anglican, R.C., others). Critical analysis leads us beyond the political coverup to the very under belly of the problem, in this case an entrenched flawed understanding of human sexuality grounded in amorphic religious concepts like ‘inspiration’ and ‘revelation’ and ‘god’s will’. Coincidently in today’s Guardian Rowan Williams reviews Jordan Peterson’s, We Who Wrestle with God. The review demonstrates that reason matters even within the closed paradigm of a religion especially where there… Read more »
Exactly. There’s much we know about reality and much we don’t, and one of the best things is finding out new stuff. For me Jesus’ reported teachings are foundational and make sense of fundamental questions. But He said there was much more to learn and do. And that inevitably involves fully engaging with the knowledge and conditions of modernity, and being excited by it, not frightened. He also said the truth sets people free, which sounds distinctly liberal. Heading back to Makin, the church collectively has vast historical intellectual reserves to fall back on, but those resources are rarely used… Read more »
Something positive on Jesuits in a minute; but first on your second point and the Makin Review. There is a very interesting article in The Tablet ( link) titled Welby’s people. From the article: “After a week in which Welby’s shortcomings have been picked over by the press and by fellow Anglicans scarcely able to hide their glee at his downfall, it should be noted that he showed considerable courage in defying his base and shifting his position on sexuality.” I don’t know from nothing about C of E politics. However, it seems to me that in The Communion in… Read more »
I think you are quite right. I find it profoundly sad how quickly the narrative manages to slip back to ‘it really wasn’t ( fill in the gap’s) fault’ ‘It is bad form to argue with profoundly traumatised people who have been damaged by their abuse’- and so by definition are less than the untraumatised rest of us and can’t see things straight. This was an accident, a blip, could have happened on my watch too. So I’m going to argue anyway. Forget about all the other litany of abuse cases badly handled and lied about.Forget about all the other… Read more »
Where, factually, is Andrew Brown wrong in saying what he says?
Or should the assertions of the badly traumatised simply have carte blanche to define the truth for all?
I’m not aware I said that… but I would suggest that the views of the badly traumatised should not be automatically patronised and written off as wrong when they are inconvenient
What is automatic about my response? It’s not the inconvenience of the accusations against Stephen Conway that upset me but their untruth and their injustice, which only became apparent after close reading of the relevant documents.
There is a very dignified statement from X Conway on the Lincoln website where he makes it clear he reported the information but also apologises that he did not eventually do more to ensure the matter had not been ‘parked ‘ somewhere else. All without once rubbishing the victims and survivors.
Thank you, Susanna. What really stuck in my craw was ‘it may seem bad form to criticise…’, as if this was simply a matter of public school etiquette rather than the lives and feelings of horribly misused people. Of course survivors are not above criticism, but ‘it may seem heartless to criticise…’ would have been more sensitive.
I think Revs Payne – and in view of their influence, Watson and Taylor especially – should be asked questions about why they “piously” sought ordination in an organisation thickly peopled with elements who had been carefully implicated in compromising them who were of exactly the same cut-down theology. Why don’t they realise that meaninglessness plus overlordism is a self-replicating recipe, minor variations being only fads and fashions in bodily and mental violations. If C of E policy had been to refrain from commending for instance Scripture Union (false ecumenism), this and some other scenarios would have turned out different… Read more »
Maybe, but Iwerne and the Bash Camps weren’t specifically Anglican and weren’t linked in an organisational way to the Church of England, so by whose authority would their methods have been changed?
There was a clear C of E connection. The Ruston report involved Evangelical Anglicans . If there is evidence of other denominations being involved then I think we should be told !
The camps wouldn’t – but part of the problem is that Smyth was a Reader – – and that will have given a sense of authority to what he did. Certainly if he was just a congregation member, or a member of a non-CofE evangelical church, I dare say the Church would be a lot less implicated. I think there needs to be some form of professional conduct standards – with the associated ability for a bishop (or council?) to remove license to minister if you breach it. This wouldn’t have stopped Smyth – but if he had his reader… Read more »
Yes. I can’t think of anyone involved in covering it up in England or Zimbabwe who was not an Anglican. Against that, some of the people who tried hardest to stop and expose Smyth in Zimbabwe were Baptists and other independents. In Cape Town, though, he operated in a non-Anglican, evangelical, setting and those people lent him respectability.
I really doubt if being a ‘Reader’ meant much at all in that conservative corner of the evangelical world. And Iwerne operated outside the CofE structures. Makin makes that clear. What is a ‘random evangelical’ ? – Smyth was one of the leaders of a highly elite, quasi-independent network. And there are already professional standards in place and licences can be, and are, removed. Ministry in the CofE has never been more carefully regulated in that respect.
I heard something to this effect several years ago (a further reflection on the longevity of this ‘saga’) and raised this point, but was pooh-poohed, and told that the Winchester Diocesan handbook and Crockford’s both said he was a Lay Reader.
Back in those days the diocesan directory would have listed the Readers. Crockfords only lists clergy. There is no LLM / Reader equivalent, even online. Synod asked for such a database to be created to enable safeguarding to be easier to manage. It has not been.
I have tracked down the original source of my information: Stephen Parsons’ ‘Surviving Church’ article “John Smyth and the question of Anglican membership”, 21 June 2019. The subject was also being discussed at the same time on TA. The following are partial quotations of comments on the ‘Surviving Church’ article, and both are dated 24th June 2019: David W: A spokesperson for the diocese of Winchester said: “When the allegations first came to light we reviewed our records. There was nothing to suggest that John Smyth had had a formal role within the diocese and so no further investigation was undertaken.”… Read more »
Rowland and Janet, this might help, hope so…. The report from Winchester College by Jan Pickles….. cites…..p14…..Smyth was a Lay Reader at Christ Church (1974-1978) following his training in 1972. (Ref… Annual returns to Diocese made by Lay Reader (1974-1980). Parish of Christ Church minutes and electoral roll).
Thank you. I have reported elsewhere that in those years I knew the Vicar and organist (a close personal friend) of Christ Church and several congregation members, sadly mostly now deceased, without once encountering any mention of John Smyth whom I already knew as a locally practising barrister.
But it is, apparently, the present Bishop who needs this information. There’s clearly an anomaly somewhere which requires resolving.
That does not explain the present Bishop’s statement which, unless incorrect, suggests that there may have been an irregularity. I see that TimP has had the same thought.
Interesting – which I guess proves that the record keeping isn’t that good. Maybe he asked someone to add him to the directory and people just assumed it must be true rather than they need to ask. Or maybe he was legitimately a reader but Winchester had only very poor records. Which is also possible as it seems some of the records relating to him trying to be ordained are missing. Hopefully we are better on this now – so if someone wanted to confirm if X was a reader they could just ask… but I have to confess I’m… Read more »
Oh dear, so much inaccurate surmise. Like you, I had assumed that he applied to Winchester for ordination (and also assumed that he was ‘turned down’ by Bishop John Vernon Taylor), but we are now told that he applied to Chelmsford.
I’m not sure why this matters so much unless it is being used as way of distancing the C of E from Smythe- and there have been other comments about this in other posts . Smythe was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and seems to have acquired the bits of his outfit from various C of E vestries and cupboards. My father was a Lay Reader in the next door diocese. Their record keeping was very sharp, to the extent of knowing when he, by then a widower, had a civil wedding to a divorced lady. He was not allowed… Read more »
As “random evangelical” – I felt was clear in this context; to mean someone who was evangelical but someone with no formal standing in the Church of England and so no different from someone picked at “random” …..
As you say being a Reader (or Lay Reader) or otherwise authorised by the CofE probably made very little difference to Iwerne.
But it may have made a difference to Winchester College?…
But I do accept this type of thing is more helpful at distancing the CofE from the actions than it is helpful for safeguarding (potential) victims.
I was responding to the comment that there was a wider issue with the methods used at the Iwerne camps. I totally agree, but was simply stating that the Church of England would have had no authority to change said methods, since the Bash Camps were not run by any official C of E body. RN was not at that point referring specifically to John Smyth (and his lay reader license), and neither was I. Members of the C of E are used to a hierarchy with licenses and accountability. But the parachurch world includes large organisations that are not… Read more »
I think there are (at least) 2 factors at play. 1 – how to make places safe. The church not having authority over the camps is relevant to this. 2 – can the Church of England be seen as doing the right thing? This may sound like reputation management; but it’s only that if it isn’t alongside actually “doing” something. Still there should be some way to enable CofE “people” to engage with non-CofE ‘things’; but with an expectation that anyone from the CofE will stick to a minimum set of standards AND that blame for failings won’t automatically fall… Read more »
David James
1 month ago
I don’t really know where to insert this because I don’t know where it’s relevant, but I do think there’s a certain naivety in the whole notion of ‘handing it over to the police’. In my experience as a parent, house owner, or parish priest there’s a hidden assumption that ‘If I do X then Y will follow’ because it’s the job of the police to reduce crime and apprehend criminals. That’s ranged from having large quantities of lead taken from the church roof through domestic burglary to having the kids mountain bikes nicked from outside Tesco. (Doesn’t seem to… Read more »
Chronology is crucial to a proper understanding of the enormous complexities of this saga. Smyth left England in the 1980s when little if anything was known about the abuse other than by his victims and the recipients of the Ruston report. The ‘legal profession’, which in this case would mean the Bar Council, was unlikely to have had any knowledge of Smyth’s actions until the 2017 television documentary first exposed the details publicly. Smyth had ceased to practise law in England literally decades earlier. It’s worth mentioning that he had set up a legal practice in South Africa and on… Read more »
Simon Eyre
1 month ago
Thank you first of all Andrew for your articles. They have helped reassure me that as one not signing the petition for Justin’s resignation, I was not being negligent I wanted to leave it some days before tackling Makin. It is a harrowing read in its detail. But it also felt very personal. I was never involved with Iwerne but I was at Cambridge at the same time as some of the leaders of our church such as Justin Welby, Nicky Gumbell and Pete Hancock. I became a Christian during the mission led by David MacInnes in 1974. The thought… Read more »
Simon, ….”the report forensically analyses the action of others 40 years after the events”…. Thank goodness for that, accountability is crucial and victims’ and survivors’ voices should be heard and justice delivered.
I hope I was not negligent either regarding the petition. It was apparent from reading a selection of the varied and often strange comments by those signing that many had no clear idea what it was actually about. I think the use of a petition to pressurise decisions in this context was irresponsible and opportunist.
I didn’t know about the petition, but wouldn’t have signed it had I done so. I don’t think a petition should be aimed at an individual other than, possibly, career politicians. For what it is worth, I share your concern.
Martin Sewell
1 month ago
I see here a lot of analysis of the Makin report, and I remind us that it is much easier to be a “ Monday night quarterback” than to play the game in real time. I had never heard of John Smyth or the Iwerne camps until I went to support a small survivor demonstration outside Canterbury Cathedral wearing my synod pass as a badge of solidarity. It was there I met victim Andy Morse and heard of the story for the first time. I was surprised and slightly embarrassed that a joint selfie was insisted upon because I was… Read more »
Thanks for this, Martin. I’ve been struggling to find a way of framing what I want to say in response to Mr Brown’s trenchant defence of Bishop Conway. Your response, and that of Susanna, who flags up the way in which Bishop Conway wrote in his own defence, have been very helpful. I was sickened by Mr Brown’s article about Bishop Conway, not because I think a different narrative shouldn’t be presented – Mr Brown is as entitled to his view as any of us, and to take the opportunity to express it. There were two things that sickened me… Read more »
I am so pleased Martin has spoken out . It is interesting that none of the ‘Monday Night Quarterbacks’ seems to want to defend the victims and survivors but only the COf E establishment- walking on the survivors if necessary to help do this.
I understand from the thread above this one that Ian Hislop has written a page about the cover up in Private Eye, including noting the complicit and ‘forgetful’
I’m dying to see how the ‘Monday Night Quarterbacks’ critique this!!
Martin Sewell’s advocacy and support of the victims of Smyth (and other abusers in other cases) has been exemplary, and at times, I guess, costly. Thank you for that. I was a Iwerne camper as a schoolboy (I think I attended twice) and once as a senior camper, having left school. Those dates were therefore 1969-1971. Looking back, knowing what we all now know, the relationship between John Smyth (who I remember well) and David Fletcher was different. Bash wanted (ConEvo) leaders for the nation. The reality was that the ‘most sound’ Iwerne men didn’t go into industry or the City, but went on… Read more »
Part B Had he responded to the Ruston Report and not only acknowledged the criminality but reported it to Hampshire Police in 1982, history would be very different, and the lives of the victims (including in Africa) different. But the ‘work’ needed to go on. The Gospel (according to the tribe) was too important to imperil by disclosing the wickedness. The issues for today inter alia are the situations that the likes of Roger Combes, Andrew Cornes, Hugh Palmer, Vaughan Roberts and others find themselves in. What did I know? Not much, but at some point in the mid-late 1990s I was told by… Read more »
I think your sense of guilt is unjustified. Rumours abound about people. Christians are enjoined not to gossip so you do not pay much attention.
Then when matters are made public you join the dots. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I am not entirely persuaded that knowledge of the exact nature and extent of the abuse was that widespread. I suspect that many more had heard vague reports of Smyth blotting his copybook in some unspecified manner.
What is the Makin report if not “Monday night quarterbacking”? My criticisms of it could be boiled down entirely to the fact that it judges everyone with the benefit of hindsight and ignores the choices that confronted them at the time. Makin has taken seven years to reach his conclusions, and been widely and properly criticised for this. I don’t myself think it should have taken more than a year. I wasn’t an active religious affairs correspondent when this story broke, partly because I was sick of dealing with clergy who told me lies. But when I did the job,… Read more »
Ah now we agree on that Mr Brown. I don’t like the conflation of cover up and mishandling in the media interviews and stories. Both happened in this case, but they are not the same thing. As you say, the cover up came from the actions of those in the Iwerne inner circle, the living members of which should most definitely be removed from active ministry and face police investigation, in my view. The mishandling came from Bishops Conway and Bailey Wells, and several others named in the Report. In my view, they should either resign or step back voluntarily… Read more »
I am a little puzzled as to what offence a failure to report would constitute. Doing an act tending and intending to pervert the course of justice requires a positive act rather than an omission. Otherwise I would commit this offence every time I smell cannabis drifting over my neighbours’s fence and fail to tell the police. Likewise assisting an.offender.
I am not a lawyer. The law on reporting a crime is I think clear and may not have changed much over the period we are dealing with. There is a moral obligation, which might not operate on the minds of some, but in the context of a church one might hope for a different outcome. As a recent example, it is now a criminal offence not to report FGM on a minor, for instance. But the reality is that Mark Ruston, who ironically produced an excellent short report in 1982, stated in unequivocal terms that the beatings constituted a… Read more »
There was no legal duty on the part of Winchester College to report these crimes, but they have honourably accepted a moral failure. Also they published a comprehensive and totally independent report in 2022:
There is one point overlooked (understandably, given the density of the report) in Andrew Brown’s excellent articles. Page 176 of the report, 4th Sept 2013: the police sergeant in Cambridgeshire expressed the view that a formal complaint should probably be made in Hampshire (not Cambs) as it was, literally, the scene of the crime. Moreover she offered to check with her superiors and report back to Yvonne Quirk. I do not recall seeing the follow-up advice to Ely diocese on this point, although I may have missed a later mention. If the police themselves were unsure what to do or… Read more »
I forgot the Hampshire angle. That’s my excuse. By the time I came to write the piece up I was more puzzled by why Yvonne Quirk had also talked to Chichester, as Makin clearly says, without offering any explanation. James Stileman, then COO Titus Trust, later Gafcon, handed over a dossier containing the full Ruston report with the victims’ names redacted to the Met for attention of the Hampshire police in at the end of September 2014. This was two months before he first told Andrew Graystone of the problem. (Makin timeline pp 177-178). “Victim” refused all contact with the… Read more »
After Ely took the right steps initially in 2013 after being informed, from then until 2017 it all looks more like a vile game of pass-the-unwanted-parcel with the music stopping whenever it got back to Ely.
Cambridgeshire Police, South Africa, Lambeth .. all of them essentially replied to Ely, ‘Thanks for the heads-up, we’ll let you deal with it. ‘
As for Chichester: perhaps Yvonne Quick was looking for advice, after the Safeguarding problems they had dealt with in recent years?
Yes. That makes sense.
Not really. Ely diocese had no jurisdiction over the police or the church in South Africa. They reported Smyth and followed up but had no power to force them to act.
As for Lambeth Palace, the same people who criticise the increased centralisation in the C of E are complaining that Welby didn’t micromanage Ely diocese safeguarding!
Well done to Andrew Brown for setting out the facts.
It’s of interest that the Makin report makes no reference to the disclosure of Smyth’s abuse in Zimbabwe by cricketer Henry Olonga in his book, suitably—or ironically—titled Blood, Sweat and Treason [first published in 2010, longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2010, and reviewed in the 2011 Wisden at pages 125-126], albeit that Olonga did not name Smyth as the abuser. Necessarily, the book majors on Olonga’s public stand in 2003 against the murderous Mugabe regime, which forced him to flee the country and escape with his life but, having referred to his becoming a Christian… Read more »
AP put Conway onto the story. It is mentioned in Conway’s first letter to Cape Town, as reproduced by Makin, but without your detail. See footnote 6 of my long post.
Thank you, Andrew for that reference. In the light of this reference to Henry Olonga’s book by Bishop Conway in his letter of 1 August 2013 (the title of which, incidentally, was wrongly cited by Conway as Blood, Sweat and Tears), it is surprising that Makin, who is all too ready to say that Justin Welby ‘could have been more curious‘ about the remark about Smyth made to him by Peter Sertin in Paris in 1981 [see report para 16.9 on page 223] and to criticise Welby, Bishop Bailey Wells, and Conway for their ‘distinct lack of curiosity‘ after August… Read more »
It seems to me that Andrew Brown, alongside many other journalists, is focusing on the least important of two different issues. The first question is the personal responsibility of either York or Canterbury for taking action, or not, at various occasions when they may have heard of Smyth’s actions a few decades ago. Did they get it right, and is this a resigning issue? The second question is the corporate or institutional responsibility of the two archbishops in leading the Church of England’s management of safeguarding, and especially their work leading the Archbishops’ Council over the past 10 years. Did… Read more »
Well, there we disagree. All talk about “leading the governance” seems to me a fantasy. The Church of England is not an organisation. It’s not even, really, a network of organisations. Pretending that it is cannot lead to good outcomes. I know that the thrust of policy ever since George Carey has been to turn it into one and that Justin Welby came closer than anyone else to success. A fat lot of good it did him, and not much good to anyone else. The first question of your questions is about real people whose acts and omissions can be… Read more »
Thanks Andrew. I am happy to agree to disagree. But on one point of clarity. I do agree with you that the Church of England is a disjointed network of independent structures, and so talk of Governance needs to be nuanced. But my concern is specifically with the work of the Archbishops’ Council, right at the centre of this network, and surely the two Archbishops must be responsible here for a committee that they chair. There has been much discussion on the TA blog about the work of the Council, and the problems with it’s lack of transparency, it’s resistance… Read more »
Which I think reveals another dimension. When scraping below the surface, a lot of the real reason for demanding a resignation is not related to Makin specifically. The narrative on the media has been “the Archbishop covered it up – if you cover it up that’s like being part of the abuse so he has to go, maybe he should be fired!” Except he didn’t – – – But dig deeper and it’s really the associated / linked matters with safeguarding that mean people want him gone. In your case the work of the Council. Fair enough to think that… Read more »
And yet the two archbishops felt that they had the influence to persuade the Bishop of Newcastle to grant Sentamu a PTO. I think that’s a vital piece of evidence which shows how things work in practice.
I agree
“The Church of England is not an organisation. It’s not even, really, a network of organisations. Pretending that it is cannot lead to good outcomes.” No – – but I am becoming more and more convinced that it should/must become one. Those at the “top” (or rather what is seen to be the top) are held to account “as-if” it was an organisation by those outside the Church; and that’s not going to change. I think an awful lot of good could come from this. Most of the arguments for the disconnected-church seem to be based on historical (it has… Read more »
This is why ‘the church’ has al least 40-odd different ways/ procedures etc of ‘safeguarding’ and more than that number of bishops, archdeacons, teams as ‘overheads’ (‘support?) above the folk at the coalface. Perhaps such things may be linked?
In passing, it has added to confusion in the public mind by creating bishops with similar or identical titles to those already adopted by the Roman Catholic church, eg Bishop of Leeds.
Perhaps this is the time to resurrect Tony Benn’s famous five questions, which I have quoted more than once to TA.
“What power have you got?
Where did you get it from?
In whose interests do you exercise it?
To whom are you accountable?
And how can we get rid of you?”
These might be interesting questions to ask various people in and around the Archbishops’ council and Church House.
Hmm, careful what you wish for, and unintended outcomes. Charism in the CofE seems to me to come from independent outliers, not the conformists. Oxford Movement, Evangelical Revival etc. A tighter, more controlled organisation might be neater and safer, but perhaps smaller and blander.
That is a fair observation.
But being a singular legal-entity shouldn’t necessarily have stopped those.
I was envisaging an organisation with formally delegated responsibilities (within some limits) – – so Vicars would still be in charge of who preaches in their church for example….
I think those are very powerful articles, especially the second (“Against Makin”). It is obviously bad the opportunities were missed to bring Smyth to belated justice once his activities became more widely known after 2013. But neither the Church of England nor any particular UK police force would have any locus to do much more than report — to whom? — suspicions. There’s no particular reason to believe an investigation in South Africa would have got any further than it did in England, especially with no access to witnesses and documents of the crimes that took place here. We know… Read more »
I’ve always enjoyed Andrew’s commentary as an invitation to look behind the media curtain and discover the Wizard of Oz is rather different from the common perception. His comments on this story are a reminder to exercise our critical faculties in the face of an apparent but dubious consensus.
+Justin’s resignation had an air of ‘taking one for the team’ about it (Caiaphas, lacking the benefit of football cliches, might have advised it ‘expedient that one man should die for the people’). I put off signing the petition because I was unsure of my motives: the managerial culture, favouring church plants over parishes, stopping priests offering Eucharist in their churches during lockdown. All this and, yes, getting caught up in the consensus – dubious or otherwise in this case. In the end, I did sign ‘for the good of all his Church’, but aware too of the ambiguities and… Read more »
I realise that the responsibilities of a bishop are greater than those of a parish priest, but… As a parish priest, I have to say that if I had received a disclosure and then passed that on to safeguarding professionals who had, in turn reported it to the police on my behalf, I would probably have thought that I had undertaken my immediate obligations. If I had then been told by the police that (on the basis of the information I had available and had provided) this was not a criminal act, and therefore couldn’t be treated as such –… Read more »
One practical point springs out of these events but is not highlighted by the report, namely the need for a review of youth work by the church and associated organisations. The best way of stopping this happening again would be to change church education. Young people can learn about the faith in ways that are both more critical and more creative. Regardless of whether we are conservative or liberal, questions about Christianity and its founder are best approached openly, tolerantly, thoughtfully, hopefully and informedly. Reframing youth work like that would provide some immunisation for young people against the events described… Read more »
“Rerum novarum” is such a good name, given the nature of the comments you make. I hope the ideas RN raises here really get some traction. Although I am sure some resignations are appropriate, the real answer to the crisis will only come with a transformation in ways of thinking. Real catharsis and healing will come through purging the Church of bad theology, not simply losing a couple of bishops or archbishops “pour encourager les autres”. And besides, encouraging critical, rational thinking amongst young people in so many spheres of life has surely never been more important. Just look at… Read more »
“encouraging critical, rational thinking amongst young people in so many spheres of life has surely never been more important” Gosh, I couldn’t agree more. And the shocker is that there’s a large section of the church that works actively against that, whereas if we are seekers of the truth we should be at the vanguard. But are we? “Liberal” is a word with different meanings. In the church context it’s often understood as a subjectively preferred emphasis, As if being liberal or conservative were equally valid choices. But a “liberal education” (what University used to be about) is about being… Read more »
Not sure it’s timid thinking, Nigel. Quite a bold claim that God’s self-disclosure is to be discerned in a specific Canon of text. But one that is made by equally rational and critical minds, and has been made by Christians consistently throughout history. Minds critical of the (superstitious?) enlightenment thinking that human reason unaided by revelation is competent to determine truth. Minds rational enough to perceive that any epistemological framework rests on some kind of faith-filled assumption about what rationality looks like. Rational minds which make the rational decision (given the resurrection) to look to Jesus as revelation of God’s… Read more »
Thank you.
Thankyou for engaging with this thought. “Minds rational enough to perceive that any epistemological framework rests on some kind of faith-filled assumption about what rationality looks like.“ Agreed, but the question is: do those assumptions and that framework remain open to critique and revision? That requires intellectual courage. I agree that it is ‘bold’ to believe certain unbelievable things! The question, it seems to me, is whether we are open to questioning our own beliefs or whether we are too fearful to do so- because it’s certainly uncomfortable to have to modify one’s beliefs, both as individuals and, even more,… Read more »
Thanks for raising the issue of assumptions v. critique and reason. The delineation matters when it comes to a consideration of scandals and harms in the churches ( Anglican, R.C., others). Critical analysis leads us beyond the political coverup to the very under belly of the problem, in this case an entrenched flawed understanding of human sexuality grounded in amorphic religious concepts like ‘inspiration’ and ‘revelation’ and ‘god’s will’. Coincidently in today’s Guardian Rowan Williams reviews Jordan Peterson’s, We Who Wrestle with God. The review demonstrates that reason matters even within the closed paradigm of a religion especially where there… Read more »
Exactly. There’s much we know about reality and much we don’t, and one of the best things is finding out new stuff. For me Jesus’ reported teachings are foundational and make sense of fundamental questions. But He said there was much more to learn and do. And that inevitably involves fully engaging with the knowledge and conditions of modernity, and being excited by it, not frightened. He also said the truth sets people free, which sounds distinctly liberal. Heading back to Makin, the church collectively has vast historical intellectual reserves to fall back on, but those resources are rarely used… Read more »
Something positive on Jesuits in a minute; but first on your second point and the Makin Review. There is a very interesting article in The Tablet ( link) titled Welby’s people. From the article: “After a week in which Welby’s shortcomings have been picked over by the press and by fellow Anglicans scarcely able to hide their glee at his downfall, it should be noted that he showed considerable courage in defying his base and shifting his position on sexuality.” I don’t know from nothing about C of E politics. However, it seems to me that in The Communion in… Read more »
I think you are quite right. I find it profoundly sad how quickly the narrative manages to slip back to ‘it really wasn’t ( fill in the gap’s) fault’ ‘It is bad form to argue with profoundly traumatised people who have been damaged by their abuse’- and so by definition are less than the untraumatised rest of us and can’t see things straight. This was an accident, a blip, could have happened on my watch too. So I’m going to argue anyway. Forget about all the other litany of abuse cases badly handled and lied about.Forget about all the other… Read more »
Where, factually, is Andrew Brown wrong in saying what he says?
Or should the assertions of the badly traumatised simply have carte blanche to define the truth for all?
I’m not aware I said that… but I would suggest that the views of the badly traumatised should not be automatically patronised and written off as wrong when they are inconvenient
What is automatic about my response? It’s not the inconvenience of the accusations against Stephen Conway that upset me but their untruth and their injustice, which only became apparent after close reading of the relevant documents.
There is a very dignified statement from X Conway on the Lincoln website where he makes it clear he reported the information but also apologises that he did not eventually do more to ensure the matter had not been ‘parked ‘ somewhere else. All without once rubbishing the victims and survivors.
Thank you, Susanna. What really stuck in my craw was ‘it may seem bad form to criticise…’, as if this was simply a matter of public school etiquette rather than the lives and feelings of horribly misused people. Of course survivors are not above criticism, but ‘it may seem heartless to criticise…’ would have been more sensitive.
I think Revs Payne – and in view of their influence, Watson and Taylor especially – should be asked questions about why they “piously” sought ordination in an organisation thickly peopled with elements who had been carefully implicated in compromising them who were of exactly the same cut-down theology. Why don’t they realise that meaninglessness plus overlordism is a self-replicating recipe, minor variations being only fads and fashions in bodily and mental violations. If C of E policy had been to refrain from commending for instance Scripture Union (false ecumenism), this and some other scenarios would have turned out different… Read more »
Maybe, but Iwerne and the Bash Camps weren’t specifically Anglican and weren’t linked in an organisational way to the Church of England, so by whose authority would their methods have been changed?
Yes… and the extremely perverse twisting of theology that Smyth “espoused” could only exist in dark, secret, quarters.
There was a clear C of E connection. The Ruston report involved Evangelical Anglicans . If there is evidence of other denominations being involved then I think we should be told !
The camps wouldn’t – but part of the problem is that Smyth was a Reader – – and that will have given a sense of authority to what he did. Certainly if he was just a congregation member, or a member of a non-CofE evangelical church, I dare say the Church would be a lot less implicated. I think there needs to be some form of professional conduct standards – with the associated ability for a bishop (or council?) to remove license to minister if you breach it. This wouldn’t have stopped Smyth – but if he had his reader… Read more »
Agreed, except that in Smyth’s day the title was ‘Lay Reader’.
The other issue is that the cover-up involved a number of Anglican clergy.
Yes. I can’t think of anyone involved in covering it up in England or Zimbabwe who was not an Anglican. Against that, some of the people who tried hardest to stop and expose Smyth in Zimbabwe were Baptists and other independents. In Cape Town, though, he operated in a non-Anglican, evangelical, setting and those people lent him respectability.
I really doubt if being a ‘Reader’ meant much at all in that conservative corner of the evangelical world. And Iwerne operated outside the CofE structures. Makin makes that clear. What is a ‘random evangelical’ ? – Smyth was one of the leaders of a highly elite, quasi-independent network. And there are already professional standards in place and licences can be, and are, removed. Ministry in the CofE has never been more carefully regulated in that respect.
The Bishop of Winchester says they have no record of Smyth being a Reader.
I heard something to this effect several years ago (a further reflection on the longevity of this ‘saga’) and raised this point, but was pooh-poohed, and told that the Winchester Diocesan handbook and Crockford’s both said he was a Lay Reader.
Back in those days the diocesan directory would have listed the Readers. Crockfords only lists clergy. There is no LLM / Reader equivalent, even online. Synod asked for such a database to be created to enable safeguarding to be easier to manage. It has not been.
I have tracked down the original source of my information: Stephen Parsons’ ‘Surviving Church’ article “John Smyth and the question of Anglican membership”, 21 June 2019. The subject was also being discussed at the same time on TA. The following are partial quotations of comments on the ‘Surviving Church’ article, and both are dated 24th June 2019: David W: A spokesperson for the diocese of Winchester said: “When the allegations first came to light we reviewed our records. There was nothing to suggest that John Smyth had had a formal role within the diocese and so no further investigation was undertaken.”… Read more »
Rowland and Janet, this might help, hope so…. The report from Winchester College by Jan Pickles….. cites…..p14…..Smyth was a Lay Reader at Christ Church (1974-1978) following his training in 1972. (Ref… Annual returns to Diocese made by Lay Reader (1974-1980). Parish of Christ Church minutes and electoral roll).
Thank you. I have reported elsewhere that in those years I knew the Vicar and organist (a close personal friend) of Christ Church and several congregation members, sadly mostly now deceased, without once encountering any mention of John Smyth whom I already knew as a locally practising barrister.
But it is, apparently, the present Bishop who needs this information. There’s clearly an anomaly somewhere which requires resolving.
That’s not difficult to resolve. It was subsequent to my making the comment on SC that I was shown Smyth’s entry in the Winchester diocesan directory.
That does not explain the present Bishop’s statement which, unless incorrect, suggests that there may have been an irregularity. I see that TimP has had the same thought.
I have seen a Winchester Diocese directory from that period which lists Smyth as a Lay Reader.
Interesting – which I guess proves that the record keeping isn’t that good. Maybe he asked someone to add him to the directory and people just assumed it must be true rather than they need to ask. Or maybe he was legitimately a reader but Winchester had only very poor records. Which is also possible as it seems some of the records relating to him trying to be ordained are missing. Hopefully we are better on this now – so if someone wanted to confirm if X was a reader they could just ask… but I have to confess I’m… Read more »
Oh dear, so much inaccurate surmise. Like you, I had assumed that he applied to Winchester for ordination (and also assumed that he was ‘turned down’ by Bishop John Vernon Taylor), but we are now told that he applied to Chelmsford.
I’m not sure why this matters so much unless it is being used as way of distancing the C of E from Smythe- and there have been other comments about this in other posts . Smythe was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and seems to have acquired the bits of his outfit from various C of E vestries and cupboards. My father was a Lay Reader in the next door diocese. Their record keeping was very sharp, to the extent of knowing when he, by then a widower, had a civil wedding to a divorced lady. He was not allowed… Read more »
As “random evangelical” – I felt was clear in this context; to mean someone who was evangelical but someone with no formal standing in the Church of England and so no different from someone picked at “random” …..
As you say being a Reader (or Lay Reader) or otherwise authorised by the CofE probably made very little difference to Iwerne.
But it may have made a difference to Winchester College?…
But I do accept this type of thing is more helpful at distancing the CofE from the actions than it is helpful for safeguarding (potential) victims.
I was responding to the comment that there was a wider issue with the methods used at the Iwerne camps. I totally agree, but was simply stating that the Church of England would have had no authority to change said methods, since the Bash Camps were not run by any official C of E body. RN was not at that point referring specifically to John Smyth (and his lay reader license), and neither was I. Members of the C of E are used to a hierarchy with licenses and accountability. But the parachurch world includes large organisations that are not… Read more »
I think there are (at least) 2 factors at play. 1 – how to make places safe. The church not having authority over the camps is relevant to this. 2 – can the Church of England be seen as doing the right thing? This may sound like reputation management; but it’s only that if it isn’t alongside actually “doing” something. Still there should be some way to enable CofE “people” to engage with non-CofE ‘things’; but with an expectation that anyone from the CofE will stick to a minimum set of standards AND that blame for failings won’t automatically fall… Read more »
I don’t really know where to insert this because I don’t know where it’s relevant, but I do think there’s a certain naivety in the whole notion of ‘handing it over to the police’. In my experience as a parent, house owner, or parish priest there’s a hidden assumption that ‘If I do X then Y will follow’ because it’s the job of the police to reduce crime and apprehend criminals. That’s ranged from having large quantities of lead taken from the church roof through domestic burglary to having the kids mountain bikes nicked from outside Tesco. (Doesn’t seem to… Read more »
Chronology is crucial to a proper understanding of the enormous complexities of this saga. Smyth left England in the 1980s when little if anything was known about the abuse other than by his victims and the recipients of the Ruston report. The ‘legal profession’, which in this case would mean the Bar Council, was unlikely to have had any knowledge of Smyth’s actions until the 2017 television documentary first exposed the details publicly. Smyth had ceased to practise law in England literally decades earlier. It’s worth mentioning that he had set up a legal practice in South Africa and on… Read more »
Thank you first of all Andrew for your articles. They have helped reassure me that as one not signing the petition for Justin’s resignation, I was not being negligent I wanted to leave it some days before tackling Makin. It is a harrowing read in its detail. But it also felt very personal. I was never involved with Iwerne but I was at Cambridge at the same time as some of the leaders of our church such as Justin Welby, Nicky Gumbell and Pete Hancock. I became a Christian during the mission led by David MacInnes in 1974. The thought… Read more »
Simon, ….”the report forensically analyses the action of others 40 years after the events”…. Thank goodness for that, accountability is crucial and victims’ and survivors’ voices should be heard and justice delivered.
I hope I was not negligent either regarding the petition. It was apparent from reading a selection of the varied and often strange comments by those signing that many had no clear idea what it was actually about. I think the use of a petition to pressurise decisions in this context was irresponsible and opportunist.
I didn’t know about the petition, but wouldn’t have signed it had I done so. I don’t think a petition should be aimed at an individual other than, possibly, career politicians. For what it is worth, I share your concern.
I see here a lot of analysis of the Makin report, and I remind us that it is much easier to be a “ Monday night quarterback” than to play the game in real time. I had never heard of John Smyth or the Iwerne camps until I went to support a small survivor demonstration outside Canterbury Cathedral wearing my synod pass as a badge of solidarity. It was there I met victim Andy Morse and heard of the story for the first time. I was surprised and slightly embarrassed that a joint selfie was insisted upon because I was… Read more »
Thanks for this, Martin. I’ve been struggling to find a way of framing what I want to say in response to Mr Brown’s trenchant defence of Bishop Conway. Your response, and that of Susanna, who flags up the way in which Bishop Conway wrote in his own defence, have been very helpful. I was sickened by Mr Brown’s article about Bishop Conway, not because I think a different narrative shouldn’t be presented – Mr Brown is as entitled to his view as any of us, and to take the opportunity to express it. There were two things that sickened me… Read more »
I am so pleased Martin has spoken out . It is interesting that none of the ‘Monday Night Quarterbacks’ seems to want to defend the victims and survivors but only the COf E establishment- walking on the survivors if necessary to help do this.
I understand from the thread above this one that Ian Hislop has written a page about the cover up in Private Eye, including noting the complicit and ‘forgetful’
I’m dying to see how the ‘Monday Night Quarterbacks’ critique this!!
Martin Sewell’s advocacy and support of the victims of Smyth (and other abusers in other cases) has been exemplary, and at times, I guess, costly. Thank you for that. I was a Iwerne camper as a schoolboy (I think I attended twice) and once as a senior camper, having left school. Those dates were therefore 1969-1971. Looking back, knowing what we all now know, the relationship between John Smyth (who I remember well) and David Fletcher was different. Bash wanted (ConEvo) leaders for the nation. The reality was that the ‘most sound’ Iwerne men didn’t go into industry or the City, but went on… Read more »
Part B Had he responded to the Ruston Report and not only acknowledged the criminality but reported it to Hampshire Police in 1982, history would be very different, and the lives of the victims (including in Africa) different. But the ‘work’ needed to go on. The Gospel (according to the tribe) was too important to imperil by disclosing the wickedness. The issues for today inter alia are the situations that the likes of Roger Combes, Andrew Cornes, Hugh Palmer, Vaughan Roberts and others find themselves in. What did I know? Not much, but at some point in the mid-late 1990s I was told by… Read more »
I think your sense of guilt is unjustified. Rumours abound about people. Christians are enjoined not to gossip so you do not pay much attention.
Then when matters are made public you join the dots. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I am not entirely persuaded that knowledge of the exact nature and extent of the abuse was that widespread. I suspect that many more had heard vague reports of Smyth blotting his copybook in some unspecified manner.
Knowing he was talking to an honourable man, not one of his clique, do you think he would have answered you honestly??
What is the Makin report if not “Monday night quarterbacking”? My criticisms of it could be boiled down entirely to the fact that it judges everyone with the benefit of hindsight and ignores the choices that confronted them at the time. Makin has taken seven years to reach his conclusions, and been widely and properly criticised for this. I don’t myself think it should have taken more than a year. I wasn’t an active religious affairs correspondent when this story broke, partly because I was sick of dealing with clergy who told me lies. But when I did the job,… Read more »
Ah now we agree on that Mr Brown. I don’t like the conflation of cover up and mishandling in the media interviews and stories. Both happened in this case, but they are not the same thing. As you say, the cover up came from the actions of those in the Iwerne inner circle, the living members of which should most definitely be removed from active ministry and face police investigation, in my view. The mishandling came from Bishops Conway and Bailey Wells, and several others named in the Report. In my view, they should either resign or step back voluntarily… Read more »
Keith Makin seems to be calling for police investigations into those who failed to report Smyth.
https://www.channel4.com/news/police-action-against-church-of-england-must-be-considered-says-reviews-author
I am a little puzzled as to what offence a failure to report would constitute. Doing an act tending and intending to pervert the course of justice requires a positive act rather than an omission. Otherwise I would commit this offence every time I smell cannabis drifting over my neighbours’s fence and fail to tell the police. Likewise assisting an.offender.
I am not a lawyer. The law on reporting a crime is I think clear and may not have changed much over the period we are dealing with. There is a moral obligation, which might not operate on the minds of some, but in the context of a church one might hope for a different outcome. As a recent example, it is now a criminal offence not to report FGM on a minor, for instance. But the reality is that Mark Ruston, who ironically produced an excellent short report in 1982, stated in unequivocal terms that the beatings constituted a… Read more »
This is the current law on reporting crime in 2024, taken from the Crown Prosecution Service website:
https://www.cps.gov.uk/reporting-crime
There was no legal duty on the part of Winchester College to report these crimes, but they have honourably accepted a moral failure. Also they published a comprehensive and totally independent report in 2022:
https://www.winchestercollege.org/assets/files/uploads/john-smyth-review-winchester-college-jan-2022-final.pdf
Private Eye : Bishops’ Moves
Private Eye News: Bishops’ moves