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Tag: John Smyth

  • Safeguarding: How Can We “Learn Lessons” From the Read Sisters’ Case?

    by Professor Helen King, lay member of General Synod, Oxford Diocese


    When, in July 2025, the details of Revd Anne-Marie Ghosh’s emotional and physical abuse by her former husband were published by a Bishop’s Disciplinary Tribunal, the Church Times (8 August 2025) reported that a spokesperson for the diocese involved – Coventry – had said “The diocese acknowledges that there are learning points.” The Tribunal had observed “We trust lessons will be learned” (paragraph 51). It is a disturbing case because Ghosh – the adult victim – was the one who had a CDM brought against her, a CDM which this Tribunal dismissed.

    “Lessons will be learned” – four words, but do they mean anything? Here I want to ask a question: how is the wider church supposed to learn these lessons, if reviews are not made public?

    The Read sisters: asking a question

    A month before the details of the Ghosh tribunal were published, I had become aware of the case of the Read sisters. This broke in a 17 June story on the BBC news site and was followed up by the Church Times on 20 June. A Lessons Learned Review (LLR) had been carried out into the abuse they suffered as children in the 1950s and 1960s from a group formed of their GP father, a female Sunday School teacher (later to become a churchwarden) and the curate (later to become a canon). The father, Robert (Bob) Read died in 1996, and the Sunday School teacher, named in the Church Times as Mary Wairing, in 2015. The then-curate is still alive.

    The Read sisters’ case disturbed me, not least because it was clearly stated in reports that the LLR would not be published. I therefore submitted the following Question to the July 2025 Synod:

    On 17 June the BBC and then the Church Times reported on the production of a safeguarding Lessons Learned Review into the allegations of abuse as young children of Jenny, Wendy and Christina Read by their father, a female Sunday School teacher and a male curate at a church in the Northeast. The father and the Sunday School teacher had a sexual relationship. The Church Times reported that as part of the Terms of Reference, the LLR would not be published. In view of the grave seriousness of the alleged sexual offences involved, which were reported to three bishops, and in view of the fact that the victims have waived their right to anonymity, how will the learning from this Lessons Learned Review now be taken forward to inform safeguarding practice?

    The Bishop of Stepney replied in her role as Lead Bishop for Safeguarding:

    The report was commissioned by the Diocese concerned, with terms of reference designed to consider how that Diocese may learn lessons in relation to its practice in responding to this case, and the appropriateness of responses by anyone to whom allegations and concerns were raised within the Diocese. The reviewer provided the Diocese with five recommendations / areas of learning. As is the norm, the Diocese has responded to these recommendations and, with oversight from its DSAP (Diocesan Safeguarding Advisory Panel) has already implemented steps which will help inform safeguarding practice. (my emphasis added)

    Given that numerous other LLRs commissioned by dioceses have been made public to benefit learning throughout the whole church, such as the LLR into the tragic events in Stowe and Maids Moreton in my own diocese – Oxford – why restrict the Read Sisters LLR to a few individuals in York Diocese? As people move between dioceses, should any review be restricted to one diocese?

    It was not, in fact, the Terms of Reference that restricted the LLR to York Diocese; after the sisters themselves repeatedly asked for the reason, the mysterious answer was given that “more than one complainant” had requested it not be shared internally or externally.

    One of the sisters, Jenny Heimerdinger, was at the York Synod in July but I was not aware of this until I returned home; she subsequently made contact and we have spoken on Zoom. She also brought to my attention the interviews in which the sisters had been involved, on BBC Look North, from 17 June 2025 and 18 June 2025, and on ITN News at 10 on 14 July 2025.

     

    Reporting abuse: from bishops to reviews

    The three Read sisters had another three surviving siblings and the family, with the other abusers, formed a very close-knit group, functioning almost as a sect in which Jenny and her siblings were kept apart from secular influences such as pop music and were discouraged from forming any friendships outside the family and church. The abuse was ritualistic and sadistic, and some of it took place in the church building. The sisters reported the abuse to a bishop in 1993, and to the then-Archbishop of Canterbury as well as another bishop in 2003; and to a third bishop in 2005. The third bishop presided over the diocese in which the former curate, by this time retired and with PTO, was then living. The abuse was also reported to IICSA in 2019 and the former curate was arrested in 2020 but no action was taken by the police due to insufficient evidence. One of the sisters was then put in touch with the York safeguarding team and funding for psychotherapy was arranged by them and has subsequently been partially provided under the national Interim Support Scheme. The York team advised the sisters to make Subject Access Requests to the various dioceses involved; the results indicate that no action was ever taken or any record made of their complaints in the former curate’s files.

    Following an internal and ineffectual Lessons Learned Review by the diocese where the former curate was living, York commissioned a further independent Lessons Learned Review in 2021, which was released to the sisters in October 2024. The reviewer appointed by York, Simon Bass, appears to be a sole operator trading as Church Safeguarding Consultancy (CSC) and, although he previously worked at Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS, now rebranded as Thirtyone:eight), there is no evidence that he had carried out any other independent reviews; the CSC website only states that the company has “undertaken several such reviews”. As a company CSC is, according to Companies House, now “dissolved” as a result of compulsory strike-off, the result of failing to fulfil its legal obligations, though the CSC website continues to be active. In 2016-17, when he set up CSC, Bass was also the independent chair of Blackburn Diocese’s Safeguarding Management Group, and he was one of the project team members for their Past Cases Review 2 in 2021. I wonder if this constitutes a conflict of interest.

    Commissioned from Bass in 2021, the York LLR was dated October 2023 so it is not clear why its release was delayed until a year later; did someone mentioned anonymously in it cause the delay? When one of the Read sisters met the Archbishop of York in January 2025, at that point he had not been given the LLR for reasons of “data protection”. When the other sisters met him in May, he had been allowed to see it at their insistence. He has given a formal apology for the abuse, though not for the mishandling of their case.

    The sisters are unimpressed by the report; its factual errors, its many typos, and its significant redactions including the removal of around 10% of the paragraphs make it incomprehensible in large measure. On these shortcomings, two sisters entered the complaint procedure which, following what seems to be questionable interference by HR, has now been stuck at Stage 3 since April 2025. Meanwhile, they themselves have given permission for the LLR to be shared.

     

    Taking it to the national team

    After the July 2025 Synod, on 12 August I wrote to the Lead Bishop for Safeguarding, Bishop Joanne Grenfell, to follow up on her answer to my question. I commented that at that stage, “I have resisted writing anything public about this case but the basic point, that an LLR can be carried out without any sharing of the ‘lessons’ beyond a small circle, does seem something that should be shared.”

    Bishop Joanne asked Julie O’Hara to respond, as Deputy Director for Learning and Development in the National Safeguarding Team; in her previous post, Julie was the lead Diocesan Safeguarding Advisor for York at the time when the Terms of Reference for the Read LLR review were drawn up.  She had accepted the sisters’ factual corrections to the initial draft of the Terms of Reference – but the Report shows that the original faulty ToRs were used. Following Bishop Joanne’s intervention, Julie and the national Director of Safeguarding, Alex Kubeyinje, replied very quickly. Their combined response was that LLRs/SPRs “should be published” but not if there were “challenges in sharing the full report due to potential identification of individuals”. In such cases an executive summary could be shared.

    Does this apply to the Read sisters’ LLR? In the LLR, the identity of the curate is not given, apparently for legal reasons; and it states that no other allegations against him were ever made. But this contradicts information given to the sisters and, as the case of David Tudor shows, identifying an abuser by name can lead to other victims and survivors being empowered to come forward. The abuser of the sisters is known to have gone to work in N. Rhodesia/Zambia immediately following his involvement with the children; in view of John Smyth’s move to Africa, with support and funding from some Church of England priests, this deserves more attention.

    The combined response from senior officers of the NST continued:

    In some cases, it seems that only the recommendations from a review are shared. In such cases, as you have identified, it can be difficult to understand the rationale and indeed there are various reasons why a full review might not be published. These can include the wishes of victims and survivors, or situations where the reviewer did not follow the agreed terms of reference, making wider sharing inappropriate. When the NST has not commissioned the review, NST colleagues may also not have full visibility into the decision-making process around publication.

    They concluded that only the commissioning diocese could comment. But we know that the three sisters wish the LLR to be shared.

     

    Keeping it local: what makes a case ‘national’?

    The lack of sharing does seem very odd. Lessons Learned Reviews (LLR) have now been renamed Safeguarding Practice Reviews (SPR) but the whole point of them remains to identify how the church, as a national body, can stop making the same mistakes. But that, of course, depends on how and with whom their findings and recommendations are shared.

    In this case, no part of the Read sisters’ LLR was shared even with the NST until one of them sent it to them in summer 2025. The response to me from Bishop Joanne and the senior NST members also stated that “The case you refer to was never seen as a national case”[1]. Why not? With three bishops and an Archbishop involved and an alleged abuser moving around the country and, indeed, overseas, it seems to be far more than a diocesan matter. Although the Terms of Reference of the Read sisters’ LLR did indeed state that the review was only about those within York Diocese to whom “allegations and concerns” had been raised, this did not rule out York sharing information with other dioceses and explicitly stated that information was to be shared with the chair of DSAP, NST and local safeguarding bodies – which did not automatically happen.

    The Read sisters’ LLR itself says “it is recognised that other dioceses hold material”. There were discussions in 2021 about York doing a joint review with the diocese where the former curate was living, but they declined. Here again it is worth comparing this situation with an ongoing case, that of abuse by David Tudor, where a review has been “jointly commissioned by the National Safeguarding Team, and the dioceses of Chelmsford and Southwark”.

    Furthermore, the letter I received from Bishop Joanne stated that NST “does require all completed reports to be shared with them and will see this one”. So, while it can’t be published and was commissioned by a diocese and not by the NST, NST “sees” it. Sees it and then what…? The senior members of the NST ended their letter to me by referring to the ongoing thematic review of the last five years [2] of LLRs, noting “we are hopeful that the themes will be learning that we can share publicly”. That leaves me asking: whyever would they not be?

     

    [1] Bishop Joanne, in giving me permission to quote or share her reply, noted that the definition of a “national” case needs work.

    [2] I would be interested to know precisely what dates are to be covered by this review.

  • A Heavy Yoke: Selina Stone on Power

    I wanted to review Selina Stone’s new book, published today, on Via Media News, because this is such an important and accessible reflection on themes which are currently being discussed widely in our churches, particularly as we continue to reel from awareness of sexual and other forms of abuse: the themes of power, leadership, trust and success. While her approach is a theological one, Stone rightly points out that theology is expressed in practice and can be shaped and distorted by our personality and prejudices. And that was where I found her book was especially valuable, because she challenges each of us to face our own power in order to understand just where it is held, and how it can be abused.

    Stone writes from the Pentecostal tradition, but everything she discusses applies equally to other denominations. Leaders’ use of the church for their own ends is only made possible by the cultures in which they function and the Christian theology they can call on; certain theologies encourage particular power dynamics which increase the chances of spiritual abuse. In a comment which reminded me of the objections some individuals make when required to do safeguarding training, she notes that “Christians … imagine that there is no need to be trained to understand sexual harassment, toxic behaviour and racist abuse, since these are ‘worldly concerns’; instead, apparently, we simply need more Bible studies” (5). And, for those of us who are at least able to recognise abuse outside the Church, she argues that we need to do far more to understand what happens inside. Using Matthew 5’s “You’ve heard it said… but I say”, she invites churches “to critically engage with the traditions they have inherited” (11).

    I particularly appreciated Stone’s dissection of the current tropes of “disagreeing well” (31) and “servant leadership” (26), the second of these identified as virtue signalling, since it can disguise the immense power such a leader may wield over others, feigning service while keeping all the power. Stone uses the example of Jean Vanier’s abuse of nuns and lay women, which also leads her to explore the danger of concepts of spiritual fatherhood and of marriage imagery when talking about spiritual union.

    The chapter on the potential of preaching in grooming a congregation to accept abusive behaviour takes as its text a sermon by Mike Pilavachi, where he used the story of Jacob and Laban to argue that God sometimes sends toxic and abusive people into our lives because… He loves us. As a Black lay woman, Stone also knows all about churches “where white married couples occupy the highest rungs of power”, noting that the concerns of the “little people” were only properly heard after Matt and Beth Redman spoke out about Pilavachi.

    Another case study is that of SPAC Nation, whose wealthy leaders told young people to give them more money, including from selling their own blood, because this would become the seed of the church and would enable them to become rich too. To encourage this behaviour, SPAC nation drew on scripture about sacrifice and obedience. Here, Stone shows how we are still too quick to assume that dominance and numerical growth are evidence of success; and focusing on God as “Almighty” can stop us seeing how God can also be breath, or possibility.

    A further section focuses on John Smyth’s abuse, which was supported by specific readings of the Cross and theologies of atonement focused on God’s wrath. Here, Stone draws on the resources of Black female and womanist theologians, and on their interpretations of the “power in the blood”. After showing the different ways in which oppressed groups have drawn on this theology, she concludes that “God does not delight in the shedding of our blood, any more than he did in the torture and murder of Jesus” (106).

    She also explores the meaning of unity, uncovering the ways in which the word can be used to push the less powerful to remain silent so that the dominant group is able to continue as before, with any expression of disagreement being silenced as a threat to unity. But the price for unity should not be paid by those “who are already forced to carry burdens too heavy for them” (86). She asks what it really means to love each other, as opposed to merely tolerating those with whom we disagree.

    This is a book which fully grasps the complexity of power. When writing on the power of vulnerability as an element of good leadership, Stone shows how controlling leaders can pretend to be vulnerable as a technique to make others reveal their own stories, and also shows how the term “vulnerable adult” can be used to suggest that the survivor is somehow the cause of the abuse. She is very aware of body theology, particularly when analysing Vanier’s views on touch, which dangerously ignored boundaries and power. She contrasts Vanier with Jesus, who knows his power and what it is for, and always waits for consent.

    What is most challenging of all is when Stone turns from the shocking cases which have become familiar to us in the last decade or so and makes us look at ourselves, at “the wolf who might be within us” (13). For this, the most important chapter is the final one, on discernment. Here I remembered what I found most powerful in recent safeguarding leadership training: the Social GGRRAAAACCEESSSS. Taken from a social science context, these emphasise that we are all disadvantaged in some contexts and privileged in others, based on who we are. The long list used in C of E safeguarding training covers: gender, geography, race, religion, ability, accent, age, appearance, class, culture, education, employment, ethnicity, sexuality, sexual orientation, spirituality, and “something else”.

    Stone looks at discernment in the sense of a community and an individual working out how best to use their gifts in ministry, but also considers its less obvious aspects, such as knowing when to speak and when to remain silent, and recognising the spiritual influences behind people’s actions. She argues that we can’t ever spot every abuser and we don’t even know what we ourselves may be capable of doing. This is not made easier when we are not taught how to discern. Even within a church community we need to recognise the sense of something being “off”, perhaps from taking seriously our own bodily reactions. A church is which is a healthy space will have a sense of community, of making space for others, of leadership which does not control but develops other people. It will understand the importance of accountability and cultivate a culture of reflection.

    This is a clear, confident theological and personal appeal for a better understanding of power; I hope it will find its way on to the recommended reading sections of all diocesan safeguarding training materials.

     

     

     

  • The Church is What We Do Next 

    by Gilo,  co-editor with Janet Fife of the book Letters to a Broken Church, and co-creator of the House of Survivors website. He is also a hymn writer.

    I recently saw Conclave at my local cinema. If you haven’t read the Robert Harris novel, and don’t want to be handed the crux of the story – avoid looking up any online reviews. They nearly all give spoilers. So I won’t reveal any here, other than one pivotal moment when a cardinal makes a quietly impassioned call to the other cardinals in the midst of heated debate, “The church is not tradition. The church is not the past. The church is what we do next.”

    The church is what we do next. Upon such a fulcrum of gravitas where promise and danger meet in equal portion is where the Church of England now stands. Almost every senior bishop who might be considered for the role of Archbishop of Canterbury is likely to have legacy ghosts trailing in their wake and waiting to haunt them. This is not a political statement, nor particularly an anti-bishop one, but rather a statement of probable fact. If the Church and especially the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) do not exercise rigorous scrutiny in this appointment, you can be sure the media will.

    Any senior bishops being considered for the role will need to have searing honesty with regard to their safeguarding history. Have they blanked survivors or denied disclosures? Have they evaded necessary and crucial questions? Have they deployed the standard institutional responses of silencing and blanking? Have they been party to the burial of things which they know should not have been buried? Have they hidden reviews under lock and key? (I know of at least one current diocesan who has done so in recent years.) Have they rested easy in quiet complicity with any bad cultures of Church House or Lambeth Palace when their position of power and privilege offered opportunity to speak up and act? In truth, the standout voice has been that of the Bishop of Newcastle. She alone has spoken fearless truth to frightened power and has from all reports met with a lack of support. Other bishops, especially senior ones, have lacked even basic courage in comparison.

    This is the reality the Church finds itself in: the CNC may sleepwalk the Church into fresh crisis simply by assuming that senior bishops are transparent in any assertion that all is well with them and that no skeletons will emerge to plunge the Church deeper into damage. Some of them are possibly too hubristic to care much.  Unaccountable power tends to breed a hubristic attitude. Some perhaps imagine that what has been successfully buried in the past will stay buried. It won’t.

    Increasingly my own view is that the next occupant of St Augustine’s Chair might need to be an interim figure. Someone who can hold the Church to its promises and critical decisions throughout this year and during the next few. But not necessarily someone attempting to usher in any ‘Grand Plan’. Lambeth Palace and the Church probably need a rest from any big Welby-esque strategic vision. Maybe five years max in the post. Deep elder wisdom required. Someone who has not necessarily been in much position of power to bury anything. Someone from the edge. Someone with a deep understanding, heart of compassion, and wisdom. Possibly a retiring suffragan. The late great Alan Wilson would have been such a figure. He was unique and I’m not sure we will see his like again. But imagine if he’d been Archbishop leading up to his retirement, with a brief to begin the vital rescue of the Church. With Rosie Harper alongside him as Chaplain and partner in the project of institutional  transformation. He had the chutzpah to speak right over the heads of the agents of resistance and obvious institutional corruption. Crucially, he and Rosie had shared the journey of survivors for a decade or more, and gathered the threads in their groundbreaking To Heal and Not to Hurt. Alan would have stood sentinel to the beginning of root and branch reform and insisted upon a much more honest Church of England built upon the keystones of systemic transparency and truthfulness.

    It’s clear that the CofE will undergo considerable and necessary change over the next decade, with hopefully a return to a much more locally focussed Church and away from the two-tiered Church of struggling parish over against the weight of privileged and unaccountable power. The next Archbishop will need a depth of wisdom that almost none of the current senior bishops seem capable of demonstrating, to guide the start of that process. Crucially, they will need to embody a focus of real energy across CofE on setting the safeguarding and response to survivors on to a genuinely healing and restorative path.

    When Channel 4’s Cathy Newman summed up the John Smyth scandal as showing that ‘the church had neither process nor kindness’, Justin Welby had no option but to agree. The next Archbishop will need to be someone who can insist upon right process matched with great kindness, and who can publicly and decisively call all structures which govern every aspect of the response to survivors to follow that lead. Transparency is the essential cornerstone of such a move. But transparency is destined to fail when touted publicly by Archbishops whilst figures hidden in the corridors of power work to mitigate against it. For transparency to work, for it to bring any possible redemption of the Church’s reputation, everyone needs to face in the same direction and sing from the same hymn sheet. And the act of kindnessing will need to be apparent throughout.

    Realistically, any implementation of structural independence is likely to be complex and require more than a few years to achieve. If this is rushed as a reactive response to the mess the Church is in, will only lead to further meltdown and confusion. So I posit some crucial first steps along the way for a possible interim Archbishop. I imagine an experienced suffragan with the strength of purpose to focus on the following:

    1. Call an EGM of Synod
    2. Support Tanni Grey-Thompson’s Mandatory Reporting bill currently in passage in the House of Lords, and call for that support across the House of Bishops and Synod.
    3. Ensure the Redress Scheme begins this year, is fair and just, and not any kind of rerun of toxic Ecclesiastical Insurance tactics.
    4. Sort out the undeniable mess of Archbishops’ Council and its wholly unaccountable Secretariat. Sackings required, even if key personnel demand immorally high severance packages. The Secretary General is unlikely to leave without a wheelbarrow of cash. So be it. But go he must.
    5. Call all of Church House and NCI staff publicly to transparency. Ditto to all bishops/dioceses. Transparency must be the watchword of the Church going forward.
    6. With this in mind, introduce the Nolan Principles into public life across the Church. Bishops and key staff are public office holders and should be required to commit to principles of accountability and integrity.
    7. Work with key parliamentarians to bring the Church quickly under Freedom of Information regulation.

    In fact, with grit and determination, I think all of these could be achieved in Year 1. Ceasing to be ‘pope’ of the Anglican Communion will free up time and energy, and allow for focus on recovery of the broken Church. If this 7-point plan was achieved, it would be a job well done, and would pave the way to longer-term repair after the turbulence of the last decade. The Church’s only chance of repair will be the measure to which it commits to the repair of those it has harmed and re-harmed.

    If the CNC chooses business as usual and Lambeth Palace ends up with someone who represents the fearful milquetoast culture we’ve seen in the bishops of recent months, then the Church is likely to fold in on itself and travel deeper towards its own shabby diminishing. If, on the other hand, they choose an unexpected and unknown elder of wisdom it may be that the Church will have a much better future after he or she has gone. The reset of the Church of England depends on the initial year or two of the next Archbishop and the vision and determination and public grit they bring to laying the groundwork.

    Any of the obvious diocesans – York, London, Oxford and others – will in various ways represent a Church of broken promises, complicity with cruel structures and reliance upon reputation management. If the CNC looks to them, the Church will rue the day. The current grim state of affairs will deepen. Let us hope the CNC (which has awkward ghosts of its own which need to be sorted) will find the boldness to choose with extraordinary care. “The Church is what we do next.”

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Justice and Moving On

    by ‘Graham’

    I am told, time and time again, that, twelve years after I first came forward, the Makin Review is published, and I must “move on”. Put this all behind me, start a new life. It’s 2025, move on.

    And my reply has always been: when victims have the truth, and justice. But what does justice look like? Have we received the truth? What does closure look like?

    I have always said that I do not want to be part of a witch hunt. This whole damned saga has ruined my life. All I want is honesty, humble, human honesty. I have said that this might have worked out so differently. If Justin had, in 2017, said “I am sorry, I messed up. I thought someone else was dealing with it. Are you alright? Is there anything I can do? I am in my car, ready to drive to see you, as I want to look you in the eyes and apologise. I want to give you my full, frank, comprehensive account of what I knew and when, what I did and when, to the absolute best that my memory allows. I will give you whatever time you need. I am ordering a full investigation today. What do you need? I am sorry, I am so, so sorry”.

    Then I would have forgiven him immediately.

    Instead, I had, in December, a bizarre meeting with an empty shell of a man. There was no human connection. The most extraordinary thing is that, in a two-hour meeting, Justin did not use my name once. And at the end (I admit, late for another meeting), he just walked out. No handshake. No looking me in the eyes, clasping my hands. No final apology. So, for me, no closure. What a missed opportunity. For him, not me.

    And, the truth? One thing that did come out of the meeting is an undertaking from Justin to provide a written account of what he knew, what he did. For seven years, victims have called for such an account: a statement, an “affidavit”, an account that clarifies, and answers our questions. I hope we do, eventually, receive this. Because victims do NOT believe we have yet received the truth. The Makin Review is very vague on what actually happened in 2013. The central task of Makin was to assess “how the CofE responded to a disclosure of abuse”. Yet, we do not know. We know it fizzled out. We know that everyone thought someone else was dealing with it, but we do NOT have the personal accounts of those involved. They may have given their testimony to Makin, but are victims entitled to the same? Should it be victims who have the right to quiz these Bishops, these senior clergy on what went wrong?

    A list of questions has been sent to Bishop Stephen Conway (such as “how many times did you write to Cape Town?” “How many times did you call them?” “How many times did you chase Lambeth and Justin to intervene on your behalf?”). And he has steadfastly refused to answer. Victims just do not have his account of what he did or did not do, and what went wrong. Do victims deserve to hear this? It is not in the Makin Review (why not?). And the same testimony from Jo Bailey Wells, Nigel Stock, Paul Butler, Elizabeth Hall, Thabo Makgoba, Garth Counsell, etc? Until victims can feel they have the full picture, the absolute full picture, we cannot have closure. And victims do not feel that a five-year Review has delivered a comprehensive picture. That is another story…

    I herein challenge Bishop Stephen Conway to write a full, no-holds-barred, searingly-honest account of the period 2013-16 and present it to victims. To answer our questions, on what went wrong. Bottom line: John Smyth was not stopped in 2013. Ergo, something went wrong. Yet no one failed?

    Then, justice. Do I believe people should hang? Of course not. John Smyth was our abuser. The host of people who failed to stop him fall somewhere on a spectrum of fault, but they were not our abusers. A number of people are “stepped back”. Note to self: what is the difference between stepping back, suspension, and removal of Permission to Officiate? But we are now almost two months since publication of the Makin Review and not a single CDM has been issued. The National Safeguarding Team – well, actually, not the NST, they do not have capacity, so they have farmed this out to a panel of unnamed lawyers – are supposedly investigating all those named in the Makin Review. But, two months later, silence. Makin was referring names up to NST from 2019, under Clause 3.1.6 of his Terms of Reference, so the failures of these people have been known about for years (leaving aside the book Bleeding for Jesus, and multiple media broadcasts). NST read the Makin Review in draft in March 2024. Yet, ten months later (or almost eight years since the original Channel 4 broadcast) no one bar the Archbishop has been “held to account”. Those “stepped back” are in limbo, and victims depressingly assume their investigations will all lead to naught.

    Personally, and I cannot talk for all victims, all I want is the truth, and humble, contrite apology. Why has Bishop Stephen Conway not written to me, personally, to apologise? Through an intermediary, or directly? Why has he not written to the victim who attempted suicide on Christmas Day 2013, unaware that 13 Bishops and Archbishops now knew about John Smyth? Would he meet me, face to face, humbly answer all the questions I have, look in my eyes and apologise?

    And where, two months after publication, is there any statement on following up Makin’s recommendations? Where is the called-for independent body that will make sure his conclusions are implemented? What is the action or actions that make victims, the Church of England, and the wider world, believe that lessons have been learned? That change will start? That a million pound Review, delayed for years, has actually achieved anything? Was it actually worth it?

    So, victims have no closure. We do not yet have the truth. We do not yet have personal apology. We do not yet have justice. We do not feel that anything has changed.

    So, I cannot yet move on.

     

  • Iwerne: The Anglican Trojan Horse

    by Canon Jeremy Pemberton, a retired priest living in the diocese of Southwell and Nottingham. Formerly in parochial ministry for twenty-six years, he was an Honorary Canon of Boga and Ely Cathedrals. Latterly, he was a senior chaplain for the NHS. He is presently undertaking doctoral research into the ecclesiology of the decline of the Church of England

    Delayed by years until it seemed it would never arrive, I think few of us reckoned with the seismic impact of the Makin report. There, behind the piety, and yet somehow magnified by it, was the horror of the sadism and cruelty of Smyth’s abusing in England; there, in a tale that is still yet to be told in full, was the more explicitly sexual exploitation of boys in Zimbabwe, and his shadowy career in South Africa. One hundred and thirty victims at least; several deaths; many lives forever altered, spoiled, and tainted; and an abused family who could never get away from this narcissistic tyrant.

    There has been a good deal of discussion of the extent to which Smyth was a Church of England abuser. His background was Plymouth Brethren, and when the family were expelled from that setting, they moved to another very conservative evangelical context. But John Smyth found a new spiritual home and purpose when he was recruited by Eric “Bash” Nash to help run the camps at Iwerne Minster from 1962 onwards. These camps were notionally under the aegis of Scripture Union, a non-denominational evangelical body, but they were effectively Bash’s own fiefdom. Nash was an ascetical, driven man whose unrelenting focus on his mission attracted enthusiastic followers from the top tier of boys’ public schools. His most famous disciple was John Stott, a Rugby pupil.

    Nash, a Church of England clergyman, had graduated to youth work and his famous ‘Bash Camps’ after two curacies. These took place at Clayesmore School in Dorset, in the village of Iwerne Minster, hence their later title, ‘Iwerne’. Nash’s mission was clear and simple, to take over the Church of England for Jesus, and through it the nation, providing it with the best leadership he could, Christian boys from elite public schools. His recipe was an imperialist hangover: but for them to be their best they needed to be Christians after his kind. And ‘his kind’ was simple, direct, and entirely Jesus-focused. Theology was a dirty word to Bash; ABC was all you needed – in his words, Admit your need; Believe that Christ died for your sins; Come to him as your Lord and Saviour.

    The camps were also defined by some other noticeable characteristics: they were single sex (though there was a girls’ Iwerne, Bash had no interest in it – or girls at all for that matter) and sex was something to be strongly discouraged. Nash himself was a confirmed bachelor, and never displayed any interest in that kind of thing. He thought marriage was a regrettable weakness, and homosexuality abhorrent. The whole structure of the work created a semi-secret world; Iwerne provided spiritual support and pastoral mentoring for boys who were, after all, away from home a lot of the time. Intense ‘personal work’, as it was called, consisted of regular meetings for Bible reading and prayer and self-examination, supported by much letter writing. It was easy to start to depend on these people who seemed to care so much. In between the running of house parties or camps at Christmas and Easter as well as in the summer, much of Bash’s life was on the road, visiting his boys at their schools.

    Questioning at Iwerne was discouraged, as was thinking; faith, discipline, overcoming temptation and sharing the message with others became the prime areas for activity, all washed down with lots of games and sport to tire everyone out.

    So there you have it: a simplistic faith, keeping its believers infantilised and unquestioning; a culture that separates itself from the world, for those who believe and turn to Christ are saved, and those who have not yet or who don’t are damned; intense relationships with mentors and colleagues, and close relationships with others discouraged; a shame culture – for the mentors wanted to impress upon you the importance of repentance for your many failings, and what teenager does not fail many times and in many ways? If you had the temerity to think you were not doing too badly then it might be suggested that you were caught in the sin of pride – it was hard to avoid feeling guilty. All of this was, as with lots of youth organisations, wrapped up in Iwerne’s own language and customs, not easily accessible to the uninitiated. If, at this point, you are thinking it sounds rather cult-like, I would not blame you.

    In the hands of Eric Nash, who, by all accounts was a modest and genuinely humble man, the camps flourished and raised up leaders for the evangelical wing of the Church of England. I have suggested that the camps and camp culture was cult-like. But what came next was much worse.

    When Nash grew old, he passed on the running of the camps to The Revd The Hon. David Fletcher, son of a Labour peer and one of ‘his’ boys. By then Nash had already introduced Smyth, who went to a minor public school (and felt acutely let down by his father that he had not gone to one of the best) into the leadership of the camps. Smyth’s own church at the time was for many years an Anglican one, and he trained as a Reader and sought ordination. The cover provided by Iwerne’s culture gave Smyth his opening. Within the oddness of Iwerne, the charismatic Smyth created a complete and effective ‘cult within a cult’ in which he was free to abuse egregiously. He was a slippery character to be sure: as the report says, a narcissist, entitled, grandiose, lacking empathy, someone who took pleasure in inflicting pain, and a man with a strong sex drive which, unnervingly for a homophobe, directed itself in part to teenage boys and young men. When challenged he would strike back, and hard, and if that failed, he was always ready to turn himself into the victim.

    Iwerne managed to nurture not one, but two very questionable leaders in that generation; Smyth, whose activities while ‘hiding in plain sight’ have been compared to those of Jimmy Savile, and David Fletcher’s younger brother Jonathan, who will come to trial for alleged sexual offences next summer. Smyth and Fletcher J. did not like each other; yet so strong is the bond inside the little society of Iwerne, that when Smyth’s world within a world was falling apart, and the news of his crimes was leaking out, Jonathan Fletcher can be found, according to Makin’s report, defending him and trying to hush things up.

    In the period 1980-2010 Iwerne, while seeming to continue as normal, was living through two major changes, one external and one internal. First, in the Church of England, the church of which most Iwerne participants were a part, the increasing dominance of evangelicals meant that men from that tribe, including those raised inside Iwerne, were ordained, and, by sheer force of numbers, started to be appointed to senior positions. In a way, this was the vindication of Eric Nash’s strategy. The fly in the ointment was that men who reached those positions were obliged by the demands of the church as a whole to grow beyond the childish and unnuanced theology of Iwerne, which made them suspect for those who kept alive the flame of Bash’s ‘ABC’. This meant that the church had leaders, or certainly some, who had not truly been raised in the historic Church of England but through a parallel closed society, and who did not instinctively understand or value Anglican theology, liturgy, history, or pastoral theology. When you are taught that Christianity is at heart all about the saved and the lost, and that you have the insight to distinguish between them here and now, then the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares, the polity of being a national church, and the practice of parochial and pastoral ministry in all its complexity, subtlety, and opportunity is rather lost on you.

    The second sequence of events, invisible to most in this period, concerned the huge threat posed by Smyth. When his appalling crimes started to become known in 1982, those clergy to whom these things were reported kept the whole business to themselves. When Mark Ruston, the vicar of the Round Church in Cambridge, and a greatly respected preacher and leader, wrote his first report that year and began to circulate it to some chosen colleagues, he was clear that he understood the law to have been broken by what Smyth had done, and cited the Offences against the Person Act of 1861 section 47: assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Rather than report this to the police, these men managed this privately for one overwhelming reason – protecting the reputation of the camps. The correspondence between them is littered with concern above all for what any scandal, should Smyth’s activities get out, might do to ‘Gospel work’. Their job, as they saw it, was reputation management, not justice. They were also deeply concerned for John and Anne Smyth and wanted to help them. And the victims of his crimes? There is, in the reports from that time and in the letters between the leaders, more than a whiff of victim blaming. Smyth, of course, encouraged this by saying that all the complaints from the boys and young men were exaggerated. The victims who started to speak were not really listened to and believed – not, that is, until one attempted to take his own life because he could not face another beating. But their needs were never prioritised. Camp, and ‘the work’, had to be protected at all costs.

    Even when Smyth had been forced to resign from camp, his friends and erstwhile colleagues from the Iwerne network clustered round to help him relocate and start a new life. Coded warnings were sent ahead, but he made it to Zimbabwe and then South Africa and was supported financially by UK and other sources in what Makin calls a ‘lavish lifestyle’ from then until he died in 2018.

    The ‘management’ of Smyth and his criminal activity was complex and multi-layered, but as it began to break down, information leaked out to Church of England clergy beyond the Iwerne network, and even bishops. Yet, somehow, even with victims starting to come forward, no one really grasped the enormity of the crimes before them and acted with the perseverance needed to stop him. Not until after 2010 are proper reports laid before the police and, even after that, poor co-ordination between county police forces and the church meant that Smyth remained at large.

    One of the trustees of the Titus Trust, which ran the Iwerne camps after 1997, acknowledged, in her submission to Makin, that she had failed to report abuse because “of a misplaced loyalty to the Iwerne regime”. That is the point: loyalty to the Iwerne regime. Loyalty to that above all else; loyalty to Iwerne above the demands of justice, charity, love, or truth. Loyalty to that regime, even, ironically, above doing what Jesus would have done.

    That regime, built as it had been on its thin gruel of a theological basis, its snobbery and elitism, and its neglect of the richness of the tradition of the Church of England, had the temerity to market its camps as giving a chance for boys to find out about “The Christian Faith”.  The ocean depths of the faith; of prayer, of thought, of service, of social engagement – none of that was offered. Just a simple ‘gospel’ message, disembodied and uninculturated, and a lot of unpleasant manipulation of vulnerable young men masquerading as pastoral care until they were entangled in Iwerne’s clutches.

    I went to Iwerne to help for two summer camps in the mid 1970s. I was twenty years old and at university. I didn’t like it; it seemed childish and creepy at the same time. Personal pressure was put on me by David Fletcher to keep coming, and that solidified my decision to having nothing more to do with it. When I was there, I saw and heard nothing amiss, and I had no personal contact with either John Smyth or Jonathan Fletcher. But I think my instincts to steer well clear were well advised.

    Theology that makes shame one of its core virtues is no Christian theology at all. The bodily and sexual dishonesty of Iwerne was almost limitless. Bodies were there to be taxed and driven in endless sport, and the world of feeling was to be avoided – it was as if bodily existence itself was an inconvenient accident. The tenderness of the incarnation was trodden underfoot by the transactionality of a two-dimensional salvation. One of the summers I went to Iwerne my visit followed some days of singing at Salisbury cathedral. It felt like taking myself away from the beauty of holiness and into a wasteland. I was told off for singing and told off for talking to the girls in the kitchen – but then, Iwerne was weird about sex. I recall being told, in a talk on sex to senior campers, that what you were looking for in a wife was someone who would be “an angel in the kitchen and a devil in bed.” I thought it was messed up misogyny then, and still do now.

    Overly negative about masturbation, fretful about any engagement between the sexes, terrified of real women, utterly neurotic about homosexual attractions and love, Iwerne’s sickness was played out in the distorted libidos and anxiety-laden fumblings of its devotees. The fear of sinning loomed over bodies in general, and participants in the camp in particular. Iwerne’s legacy of fear, homophobia, and inconsistency still fuels the culture war around Living in Love and Faith.

    At its worst, Iwerne was a haven for a vile abuser and criminal. That its alumni, products of a para-church organisation with questionable theology and loyalty to the Anglican tradition, have risen so high in the life of our church, either as leaders or prominent parochial ministers, is our tragedy. It will be our folly if we don’t see what has been done, and fight to recover the breadth of the Church of England, and its traditions, and its social and cultural engagement, so that, even if much diminished, we can again be a church for the nation, and not an incomprehensible and morally suspect oddity.

     

  • Is the Failure to Act on a Safeguarding Disclosure a Disciplinary Offence or Not?

    by ‘Graham’

    “Nobody can say it is not my fault. It is so absurd,” Archbishop Welby said. “To say, ‘I have heard about a problem but it was someone else’s job to report it’, that is not an acceptable human response, let alone a leadership response.

    “If you know a child is being abused, not to report it is simply wrong, for every human being.” IICSA, 20 March 2018.

    “These victims are rightly concerned that no one appears to have faced any sanction yet, when it is clear a number of Christians, clergy and lay, were made aware of the abuse in the 1980s and many learned in subsequent years. I have not yet received a list of names. I am told by Survivors that some facilitated Smyth’s move to Africa. I have made it clear that the National Safeguarding Team will investigate every clergy person or others within their scope of whom they have been informed who knew and failed to disclose the abuse.” Justin Welby, 20 May 2021.

     

    I am a victim of John Smyth QC. It is recorded in Bleeding for Jesus, by Andrew Graystone, that multiple people, “Christians, clergy and lay” knew of the abuse by John Smyth in the 1980s. I know the names of some who provided references for him to move to Africa. I have also read the draft Makin Review (under embargo) and read that 10 Bishops and three Archbishops had received the disclosure of his abuse by August 2013, including of course Justin Welby. And those are just the ones that Keith Makin has been able to identify.

    I have less of a beef with those who knew in the period after February 1982, when the abuse was uncovered, and this is not the focus of this blog. Smyth was stopped pretty quickly, and multiple efforts were made to find him a new home. My complaint about that period is that he could just set up boys’ camps again in Africa, with no supervision, no oversight, no intervention, despite so many being aware of his earlier abuse. Pretty soon a large number were told of further abuse. But, as I said, that period is not my focus.

    My problem concerns 2012 (when I came forward) and 2013, by which time safeguarding rules were codified, a nascent NST existed, and when Smyth should have been stopped and brought to justice. By 2013, the full horror of the abuse was plain to see.

    So, what do I make of the 2021 statement by Justin Welby, and what he meant by that: or at least what he thought he meant by that: “I have made it clear that the National Safeguarding Team will investigate every clergy person or others within their scope of whom they have been informed who knew and failed to disclose the abuse”?  Was it an echo, a reiteration, of his IICSA comments, or was it just because he could hardly say anything different ?

    And my worry is that I suggest he did think everyone who failed in 2012-13 would be “investigated”. The outside world, we victims, General Synod members, would all say “of course they will be investigated, that is obvious”. Yet, I think he so ignorant of practice on the ground by the National Safeguarding Team (NST), or so badly briefed, that what he actually said meant nothing of the sort.

    Keith Makin and NST have had the names for years, since 2017 at least. Keith Makin has under his Terms of Reference, “referred upstairs” where he believes people have failed. Yet, there is silence, inaction. We have no visible evidence of CDMs, we have no visible evidence of the removal of PTO from anyone. There has been a comment “wait for Makin” (and this was the answer from Justin Welby, when challenged directly whether he did fund John Smyth in Africa). But why? The Makin Review is an independent review, and the Church of England could do what they did to the Elliot Review: trash it, and say “he is independent, so we do not have to follow his recommendations”

    But why wait? The NST and the CofE have all the evidence they need to start their own investigation and disciplinary processes. Keith Makin has no power to start a CDM process. He may have uncovered evidence, and under his Terms of Reference, passed it on to the relevant authorities. But the CofE’s investigation and disciplinary processes can only be undertaken … by the CofE.

    So, what did Justin mean? Or think he meant? I think he tried to suggest that proper, detailed investigation of failings would be instigated. Yet there is absolutely no evidence this is the case. What I believe did happen is that NST asked an entirely different question – “is this person a current safeguarding risk?” – and have limited their investigation solely to this question. So, the failings in 1982 and 2012-13 are never investigated at all.

    But the Church must decide whether failings over safeguarding disclosures are actually a disciplinary offence or not. There are multiple examples where it is alleged that senior figures, including Archbishops, did not do what they might when they learned of abuse: from George Carey in the Peter Ball case, to Bishops in the Devamanikkam case. People knew about Mike (“it’s just Mike”) Pilavachi, and Iain Broomfield, and Jonathan Fletcher, and most recently the many clergy involved at Blackburn. And in each case, they did nothing, or at least not enough to stop the alleged abusers, to instigate the necessary investigations and Church disciplinary procedures.

    So, at the moment, as a Smyth victim, I have read of 13 Archbishops and Bishops who failed to act, yet have no evidence of a single sanction against any of them. The Church of England must codify, must publish, must make plain, the consequences of safeguarding failures around disclosure. Or just announce that it does not matter: that failures around disclosure are unfortunate but no more. But surely that is not what is intended?

    If failures around disclosure of abuse have no consequence, then the words of Justin at IICSA and in 2021 may just have been hot air.

  • Safeguarding: When Good Reviews Go Bad

    by Andrew Graystone, who uncovered the abuses by John Smyth in a series of reports on Channel 4 News in February 2017; he continues to advocate for victims of church abuse, and speaks regularly with survivors of John Smyth.

    There have now been seven public reviews of the activities of John Smyth – or eight if you count my own book, Bleeding for Jesus. The first was Operation Cubic, which was conducted by Hampshire Police, and ended with a referral to the CPS. Then, after the revelations were made public, the Scripture Union commissioned a review into its own involvement. A review was conducted for Winchester College, where Smyth groomed many of his victims. The Titus Trust has held two reviews – one into Smyth’s abuses and a second, by the safeguarding agency ThirtyOne:Eight to conduct a review of its internal culture. The Advance network of independent churches carried out its own investigation, which focussed particularly on the involvement of its former leader PJ Smyth, who is John Smyth’s son. And finally, we await the arrival of the Makin Review, which was commissioned by the Church of England.

    As someone who has reluctantly become something of an expert on John Smyth’s abusive career, I have participated in all of these reviews. Aside from taking a huge amount of time, this has given me some insight into how such reviews are conducted, and what makes them effective or ineffective.

    It is worth remembering that one reason why there were so many reviews into the one narrative is that the key agencies at the centre of the case refused to work together on a single inquiry.

    Speaking to Cathy Newman on Channel 4 News in April 2019, Archbishop Justin Welby explained that only a joint inquiry would be effective. “Unless you can get everyone in, you’re never going to get anywhere near the truth.” Nevertheless, having failed to persuade everyone to participate, the Church of England eventually commissioned its own review. That review – scheduled to last nine months – has now lasted five years, and there is still no date for its publication.

    It is worth rehearsing the gloomy history of delay and obfuscation in this inquiry.  The Church of England’s intention to hold an inquiry was first announced by the then Bishop for Safeguarding, Peter Hancock, on the morning after Smyth died in August 2018. By then Smyth’s abuse had already been in the public domain for almost 18 months. Justin Welby had been aware of it for over five years (discounting earlier knowledge, which he first denied, but now admits.) The first formal complaint had been made to the Church of England six years earlier. And of course many key figures in the church, some of them at the highest level, had carried the knowledge for a staggering thirty-five years.

    Even so, the inquiry was not formally launched for a further twelve months. It was scheduled to last nine months, meaning that it would be published in May 2020. Since then there have been no less than six announcements that the inquiry was going to be late. In every case, survivors were promised that it was imminent. In January 2022, survivors and General Synod were told that the first drafts would be presented in April 2022. They weren’t. Then General Synod members were told that it would be published in the Autumn of 2022. Of course it wasn’t. The National Safeguarding Team has stopped making announcements about the timetable.

    There are two important questions. Firstly, what has caused the seemingly endless delay?  Secondly, why does this matter?

    Bishop Jonathan Gibbs, the second of three “Lead Bishops” to preside over the review so far, told Synod that “There have been significant delays due to COVID and the exceptionally high volume of information.” Blaming the pandemic is convenient, but disingenuous. The review was already well behind schedule before lockdown was imposed. In any case, very little of the work has been done face to face. Blaming the unexpected amount of evidence is a nonsense too. What on earth was the church expecting? They knew when they started that there were over 100 victims, four decades of history, and scores of witnesses to hear from. If they were taken by surprise by the “high volume of information” it can only be because they weren’t paying attention to what the victims and others had been telling them.

    The core problems that have caused the delay are quite different. They are:

    1) An insufficiently experienced reviewer. Perhaps Keith Makin will yet turn out to have been an inspired choice for this important role. We have not been told by what process he was given the job. He had never previously conducted a review on anything like this scale. He had held senior social work management posts, and had been an Independent Scrutineer for local authorities, but he had little forensic experience, and nothing that would seem to prepare him for such a complex case. He also had little experience of the church’s structures and processes.

    2) Lack of resources. The church decided that the task of reviewing a case lasting over forty years with more than a hundred victims could be handled by one part-time reviewer contracted for just two days a week, with a part-time assistant. This is far less resource than you would expect in comparable reviews. Of course it is not Mr Makin’s fault that he was given such inadequate resources for such a huge task. The church either didn’t recognise the scale of the review it was launching, or simply didn’t care. For example, the review was launched without the necessary GDPR arrangements in place. It was seven months out of a scheduled nine before interviews could be recorded and transcribed. Staggeringly, the necessary privacy notice was not issued until a full year later. On the same day that the Smyth Review was announced, the church announced another review, this time into the child rapist Revd Trevor Devamanikkam. That case – though no less serious – had just one perpetrator and one known victim. Yet it was set up with the same timetable and resources. Perhaps the church was simply not thinking clearly about what it was doing. Or perhaps the prime motivation for launching these reviews was just to be able to send out a press release saying that it was doing something.

    3) Lack of purpose, drive and consistency in the commissioning body. The church still appears to have little idea about how reviews work. They don’t seem to be able to distinguish between a review, an inquiry and an investigation. To this day it remains unclear who wants the Makin Review, why they want it and why it needs to be done in a timely way. As usual, nobody even knows what will happen to the report. Will it be read by bishops? Debated at Synod? Or just sit online somewhere for a few weeks before it is lost?

    4) Lack of oversight. Best practice for a review like this is to appoint an independent accountability body, separate from the reviewer and the commissioning body, whose task is to monitor the progress and scope of the review. That body might include interested parties, including representative survivors. When Thirty-One:Eight reviewed the abuses of Smyth’s fellow-abuser Revd Jonathan Fletcher, just such a body was appointed. They were able to provide assurance about the independence and thoroughness of the review, and also added their own statement to be read alongside it. Makin has not had this advantage. He has had no one asking him what is going on (with the exception of dogged Smyth survivors who take it upon themselves to do so informally). He has had no one asking him awkward questions about such crucial areas as record-keeping, confidentiality, resources or timescale. And when (or if) the review is published, there will be no one independent to give it an imprimatur. It will be, effectively, an undefended reviewer saying ‘This is how I see things.’ I fear that the lack of an independent scrutiny body is going to be particularly awkward over the next few months, if those who find themselves criticised by Mr Makin decide to cut up rough.

    So there are several reasons why this review has struggled from the start, and why it is so shockingly delayed. But why the rush anyway? Conducting reviews is a lucrative business. The author of an earlier church review reported privately but proudly that he had bought a London flat with the proceeds. In 2019 the NST themselves inadvertently leaked Mr Makin’s day rate – at that stage, it was £650 per day. The Church of England has been extremely chary about revealing the overall cost of the Makin Review. Bishop Jonathan Gibbs was asked about this directly twice in General Synod questions in November 2022. He would only say “There is always a financial cost associated with any Independent Review, however this must be balanced with establishing the truth and listening to the voices of victims and survivors.” Synod members might feel they have a right to greater clarity.

    Why does all of this matter? Well, first, because the delay makes the review weaker. In the time between the disclosure of Smyth’s abuse twelve years ago in 2012 and the publication of the inquiry (2024? 2025?), some key figures have conveniently died. They include Smyth himself, who consequently managed to escape justice from the church, as well as the criminal courts. Revd David Fletcher, who probably did more than anyone else to enable Smyth’s career of abuse, has also died. Others have retired, or will do so before publication, placing them beyond the effective reach of the church’s disciplinary measures.

    In the course of writing my book, I approached a number of senior clergy who were implicated in the failure to stop Smyth’s abuse. In several cases they said they weren’t willing to speak to me until the Makin review was complete. That was now several years ago. The Archbishop of Canterbury gave assurances that if any currently serving church officers were found to have failed in their safeguarding duties, they would be investigated and disciplined whilst the review was in progress. To my knowledge only two very junior clergy have been sanctioned, and one of those was long retired. My book, published in October 2022, identified nine currently serving bishops who appeared to have failed in their safeguarding duties. They include Archbishop Justin Welby. Have any of them been disciplined?

    The delay also matters because there are two over-riding reasons to hold such an inquiry. The first is to restore confidence in the church. The hope is that the inquiry will draw a line under a terrible episode. Ideally it would show that the church did not make any mistakes in its handling of disclosures of abuse, but that’s unlikely to be the case. The alternative is that the inquiry should demonstrate that, even though the church made mistakes, it will not do so again. Lessons have been learned; processes have been changed; staff have been retrained or removed.  This is the basis on which trust can be rebuilt. But for that trust to be rebuilt, the process of the review must itself be sound. If there is any suspicion, justified or not, that the church has not been fully transparent, then the measure of trust will decline instead of increasing. If there is any hint that the church has tried to avoid, delay or manipulate the publication, it will do itself more harm than good. As things stand, those suspicions are hard to avoid.

    In this case, the process of the review has served to diminish, not enhance, trust in the church’s safeguarding practices. The review itself has been marked by delay, mismanagement, amateurism, poor communications and obfuscation. These are the same characteristics that allow abusers like Smyth to operate. However good the text of the Makin review is, if and when it is eventually published, no one who has watched the national church’s handling of the process will be able to say with confidence “This could never happen again.”

    The second reason to hold such an inquiry is for the sake of the victims. It is a vital part of the church acknowledging that it made mistakes. Only when the church recognises this publicly is it possible for victims to begin to rebuild their lives, and even in some cases to forgive. If the church, by its acts or by its omissions, allows victims to imagine that it might still be hiding facts, or avoiding facing up to the truth, then instead of healing, victims are re-abused by the process.

    For what it’s worth, I think publication of the Makin Review into John Smyth is still a long way off. Even if the first draft of the text is complete, there is a long way to go before publication. Parts of it have been seen by a number of Smyth’s victims, but it has not yet begun the lengthy representation process known as ‘Maxwellisation’. In other words, anyone who is referred to critically in the text will have a right to read it, and respond to what they perceive as factual errors. This isn’t going to be quick. There are likely to be many people on the wrong end of Mr Makin’s pen. Many of them will call in lawyers. Those who are unfamiliar with the process of reviews may not realise that before a text is published there can be endless legal battles over what it can or can’t say. The church is almost continually waging these battles with reviewers. Given that one of the individuals criticised for his failures over Smyth is almost certainly going to be Archbishop Welby, I would be surprised if the report is published before his retirement is announced.

    When it is published, what can we expect? Will anyone take responsibility for the largest abuse scandal in the Church of England for a century by offering their resignation? I doubt it. Will there be sanctions for those who enabled Smyth to abuse, or failed to act on what they knew? There’s no precedent for that. Will the report be debated by General Synod? I don’t suppose so. What then? I imagine there will be the usual apology from Lambeth Palace, posted on a website somewhere. Such apologies are now so familiar that I could have a good stab at drafting it for them. Then it will be business as usual for the church. If there is another John Smyth out there, and to my certain knowledge there is, he will surely breathe a sigh of relief.

    The scope of the Makin Review was always limited. For instance, it doesn’t look into Smyth’s time in Africa, where most of his abusing occurred. Nor will it look at the influence of the Iwerne network in the Church of England, nor the theological drivers that motivated the cover-up of his abuse over three decades.

    We are on to our third Lead Bishop and our fifth Director of Safeguarding since the review was announced. Synod and Archbishops’ Council are hopelessly distracted. In the absence of an independent supervisory group there is little support or accountability for Mr Makin, and little pressure to get his work over the line. What if he has found himself out of his depth in the scale, detail and politics of the process? In the meantime, he is earning handsomely from the delay – although that hasn’t prevented him from taking another role as Independent Scrutineer for the London Borough of Croydon. Perhaps most significantly, a significant number of senior church leaders, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, have good reason to want the review to continue indefinitely.

    Perhaps there is another way forward. The Church could acknowledge that the Makin process has broken down. Given that there have been seven reviews and a book, a barrister could be appointed with two months to produce a digest of what is known so far.  There would be unanswered questions, but they could be identified as such. Without such a breakthrough, my own growing expectation is that the review will never be published.