by ‘Graham’
There have been, in the last ten days, two efforts to address this question. In a letter to the Church Times on 5 October 2024, former General Synod member Vasantha Gnanadoss asks whether there should be “duty of candour” within the church. She suggests a “John Smyth clause” in Church disciplinary legislation. As a victim of John Smyth myself, I have long wished that there might be greater integrity in the statements made by senior figures around the John Smyth abuse scandal.
This is then picked up by an article in Christian Today on 8 October 2024, when Julian Mann asks whether a duty of candour in 1982 might have saved around 90 African children from the abuser John Smyth. One died: Guide Nyachuru. The article then veers into mandatory reporting, which is a much more complex question – though one that is vitally important.
And why is a “duty of candour” so important? First, the obvious Christian duty to be truthful. The moral imperative not to “bear false witness” is surely much wider than the secular requirement to be truthful? A wide interpretation would include withholding the truth, when a counter narrative is known. And not actively misleading, by “putting a spin” on things. The Church of England seems obsessed with reputation management, so is prepared to dissemble and give answers that are far from “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. Perhaps, like Colonel Jessup in the film A Few Good Men, the Archbishops feel that their flock “can’t handle the truth.”
We all will be aware of times when the Church has not been entirely honest. An answer to General Synod may be a half-truth, a disguise, a cover up. The answer given to General Synod in February 2024 by Jamie Harrison, an Archbishops’ Council member, was a supreme example. Asked about “how many reviews had already been commenced” for the “ISB 11” he replied that “Survivors engaging with the IC (Interim Commissioner) have requested that their engagement is kept confidential therefore the IC cannot confirm the number at this stage”. While strictly true, around confidentiality, Harrison must have known – or certainly ought to have known – that at that stage not a single review had been commissioned or started. Not entirely honest?
This problem with honesty extends to Church of England employees. On 27 April 2022, the NST announced with regard to the Makin Review into John Smyth: “The first phase draft is expected to be with the NST within a month and it will continue to receive drafts over the summer months”. This was either known to be absolutely untrue, or NST had just failed to check that it was true. Had Keith Makin simply lied to them – like a schoolboy concocting a story about why he hadn’t finished his homework? Or was he in effect lying to himself about his ability to deliver? Either way, the answer given to General Synod was simply untrue.
And what about the Archbishops? Stephen Cottrell has recently been caught out with regard to statements made to General Synod in July 2023. Subsequent research has shown that his “mistake” was repeated on multiple occasions, in front of people who knew that his statement was just untrue. However, rather than show a “duty of candour” in 2023, or in his apology in General Synod in July 2024, it is “spun” as a “mistake”. No, Stephen, your statement in July 2023 was not just a “mistake”. Whether the words you said were your own, or whether they were given to you to say, they were simply untrue.
When an MP or a minister is revealed to have misled Parliament, they are required to apologise and correct the record. If they are found to have lied in public, they are usually dismissed by their party or government – or at least they were until the past few years when standards of truth in public life have plummeted. Synod is a statutory body modelled on, and deriving its power from, parliament. Why is it legitimate to deceive Synod without consequences? Come to that, why is it acceptable for a bishop or archbishop who has been found to have lied in public to remain in the national legislature?
And so to Justin Welby, who is of far greater interest to victims of John Smyth. Welby has only made two significant public comments on John Smyth: at LBC on 2 February 2017, as the story was breaking, and on 12 April 2019 to Cathy Newman on Channel 4. Now, where do we start?
At LBC, Justin stated that “I went off to work in France in 1978 … And I was abroad at the time the report was done and had no contact with them at all”. By May 2017 this had been shown to be completely untrue, as evidence had emerged of his attendance at a camp as a speaker in 1979, and that he had received the Iwerne newsletter during that period. “No contact” is simply untrue, and gives the impression of having broken ties with Iwerne. However, his biography states that “Welby was involved in the camps as an undergraduate and again as a businessman and theological college student in the 1980s and early 1990s.” His LBC answer fails the “duty of candour”.
Then on Channel 4 he stated that, in 2013, “I wrote to the Primate in South Africa”. He has subsequently admitted this was simply untrue. By 2019, he had had two years to recall and reflect upon what happened in 2013. But he told an outright untruth.
And spin, a failure in the “duty of candour”. On Channel 4 he made the assertion that “John Smyth was not actually an Anglican” and that “Iwerne was not part of the Church of England”. These sound like lines given to him by a crisis management consultant. But in fact John Smyth was an authorised Church of England Lay Reader; he worshipped at Christ Church, Winchester, a Church of England church. In Zimbabwe he worshipped at St Luke’s Greendale, whose vicar was Vicar-General of the Anglican Diocese of Zimbabwe. In Cape Town, he worshipped at St Martin’s Bergvliet, which describes itself as an “Anglican community church”. Any claim that Smyth was not Anglican is simply untrue.
“Iwerne is not part of the Church of England”? Might one question why, then, the future Archbishop of Canterbury attended for three decades? What did he think he was attending? Referees for Iwerne included Lord Coggan, former Archbishop of Canterbury, and Maurice Wood, Bishop of Norwich. It was run by David Fletcher, holding licence from the Church of England. A victim has identified 58 Iwerne attendees in 1982-83 who were either then ordained, or have subsequently been ordained in the Church of England. Several current, and some former, Bishops attended Iwerne. Justin’s statement that Iwerne was not part of the Church of England fails the “duty of candour”. Perhaps what Justin Welby was really saying was “My job is impossibly hard as it is. I have to try to say things all the time that will keep everybody on board. Please don’t ask me on top of that to tell the truth.”
The Channel 4 interview spawned the “Fourteen Lies letter” as victims refer to it. I will not here go through all the “untruths” (“the Bishop of Ely contacted the statutory authorities”: untrue; “the allegations didn’t take place at Iwerne”: untrue). The Makin Review will show that many of the statements made to LBC were also simply untrue.
One of the greatest frustrations for the victims of John Smyth is that we still do not yet have the truth. We need that for a sense of justice, for closure, for the chance to “move on”. We still do not have Justin’s account of what he did or did not know, and did or did not do. This is not just frustrating: it is a deliberate withholding from victims of simple honesty and integrity. This covers not just what is known, but those things not yet disclosed. It has emerged this year in Private Eye (Issue 1628, 18 July 2024) that Justin was a financial contributor to Smyth’s work in Africa. But the Archbishop is hiding behind “wait for Makin” and refusing to answer questions on this subject. He is withholding the truth. Why is this not in the public domain, almost eight years after the Channel 4 expose?
Back to my title, and “should we expect the Church to tell the truth?” When they are in the pulpit, archbishops expect us to believe that they are telling the truth. But when they are dealing with difficult issues, bishops and archbishops routinely defer to church lawyers, who devise answers that are designed to avoid consequences, and communications advisers, who burnish the answers to ensure that they contain the minimum of actual information. The Church of England spends tens of millions of pounds a year on communications at national and diocesan levels. But for decades, the church has not employed communications specialists. Instead they have chosen to employ Public Relations experts – a very different profession, with an agenda that focusses on reputation management, not on telling the truth.
The experience of victims, campaigners, allies, and members of General Synod, is that we cannot expect to hear the truth. This is an extraordinary assertion. But victims of Peter Ball, Trevor Devamanikkam, Jonathan Fletcher, Mike Pilavachi, Iain Broomfield are all left feeling they have NOT been told “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.
And this failure in the “duty of candour” starts at the top: with the Archbishops.
Any thoughts?