The evangelical Christian barrister John Smyth abused as many as 130 boys and younger males within the UK, Zimbabwe and probably different African nations however an impartial evaluation has mentioned there stays little concrete data on his time in South Africa.
The evaluation into the Anglican church’s dealing with of Smyth’s abuses mentioned he may need been dropped at justice had Justin Welby, who on Tuesday introduced he would step down as archbishop of Canterbury, formally reported him to the police when he discovered in 2013.
Instead, Smyth died in South Africa in 2018, whereas a UK police investigation prompted by a Channel 4 documentary in 2017 was nonetheless persevering with.
He had moved to Zimbabwe together with his spouse, Anne, in 1984 after Church of England figures found his abuse of boys and younger males at summer time camps for Christians, together with beating them and forcing them to strip bare, however didn’t report him to police.
By 1986, Smyth was working Christian vacation camps for boys in Zimbabwe. He would beat boys with desk tennis bats and power them to bathe, swim and pray bare with him, based on the impartial Makin evaluation.
In December 1992, 16-year-old Guide Nyachuru drowned in a swimming pool in what the evaluation mentioned had been “suspicious circumstances”. Smyth officiated at Nyachuru’s funeral, whose demise he later described as an “unfortunate incident”.
Smyth was charged in Zimbabwe in 1995 with culpable murder and assaulting different boys. The trial began in 1997, however collapsed due to the prosecutor having a battle of curiosity.
In 2001, Smyth and his spouse moved to Durban, South Africa, after they had been barred from re-entering Zimbabwe. By 2005, he had moved to Cape Town and was campaigning for conservative evangelical causes. That 12 months, he suggested on an unsuccessful authorized case in opposition to South Africa’s new same-sex marriage legislation.
“There is little concrete information on John Smyth’s time in South Africa. It is highly likely that he was continuing to abuse young men and there is some evidence to this effect,” the Makin evaluation mentioned. “How John Smyth funded his quite opulent lifestyle, living in a large house in a quiet suburb of Cape Town, is not known.”
It was not till February 2017, after Channel 4 broadcast allegations of abuse in opposition to Smyth, that his Cape Town church, Church-on-Main, eliminated him and Ann Smyth as leaders.
The church mentioned on the time that it had been made conscious of “worrying concerns” about Smyth the earlier September. It mentioned Smyth had met younger males for video games of squash, “followed by a shower in a common shower, then lunch over which we were told [Smyth] would make generally unsolicited inquiries about the young men’s experience of pornography, masturbation and other sexual matters”.
Smyth was “offering his advice regarding sexual matters that left the person feeling uncomfortable”, the church mentioned, describing it as “pastorally unwise”.
The church emphasised then that it had no proof of crimes or of bodily contact between Smyth and the younger males. It additionally mentioned that it solely turned conscious of the extent of the alleged UK abuse in January 2017.
In 2013, Stephen Conway, then bishop of Ely and now of Lincoln, despatched a letter to the bishop of Cape Town setting out an allegation made by one in all Smyth’s UK victims.
“It would appear that no information about the risk he poses to children and adults has followed him from the United Kingdom to Zimbabwe or South Africa,” Conway mentioned within the letter, revealed by the impartial evaluation.
The then bishop, Garth Counsell, “is in consultation with the rector of that parish and will consult with the archbishop of Cape Town … Thabo Makgoba, as to the way forward”, a short reply revealed by the evaluation mentioned.
In 2021, Welby wrote to Makgoba providing to assist a evaluation of what Smyth had completed in southern Africa.
Two years later, the bishop of Stepney, Joanne Grenfell, who leads safeguarding within the Church of England, mentioned on the synod that after the evaluation they might “liaise” with these investigating Smyth’s abuses in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
