Some fifteen years ago, I read a piercing observation in The New Yorker about the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal. The writer pointed out that the scandal would never have come to light without the world—“our largely democratic, secularist, liberal, pluralist modern world”—holding the church to account. But, the writer suggested, according to the ideals of Christianity, it’s supposed to be the other way around.
At the time, I said to myself, Well, that’s just Roman Catholics. That kind of thing doesn’t happen with evangelicals, with truly Bible-believing Christians.
In 2019, however, the Houston Chronicle brought to light the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) sexual abuse scandal. The SBC, a fellowship of 47,000 Baptist churches, might never have properly addressed that scandal without the Chronicle’s coverage and pressure. The world was again holding the church to account, instead of the other way around—only this time it wasn’t Catholics but evangelicals who were in the wrong.
Meanwhile, in Britain, where I come from, the same process was underway, beginning with a national TV news report in 2017. The scandal this report exposed is now widely recognized as the worst abuse case in the history of the Church of England. Further revelations have ultimately led to the resignation this week of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby—the most senior leader in the global Anglican Communion. The church might never have revealed this scandal if it had been left to its own devices by the world.
What Happened
Abuse Connected to Evangelical Camps
Warning: this section contains descriptions of physical and sexual abuse.
On February 2, 2017, Channel 4 News revealed that in the 1970s and 80s, John Smyth, then a high profile trial lawyer, had savagely beaten boys and young men.
The world was again holding the church to account, instead of the other way around—only this time it wasn’t Catholics but evangelicals who were in the wrong.
Smyth gained influence over his victims through his involvement with an evangelical summer camp ministry: Varsity and Public School Camps, later renamed Iwerne Holidays for the camps’ location near Iwerne Minster (Iwerne is pronounced “U-ern”). Smyth also groomed victims at Winchester College, a prestigious boarding school near his home. The school’s Christian group was associated with the Iwerne camps, and Smyth regularly visited that group.
According to the most recent report, by 1982 Smyth had abused around 30 boys and young men, who were aged 16 and older. Eight of these victims were treated with special brutality, receiving a combined total of 14,000 lashings over a three-year period. One victim was struck with a cane 800 times in one day.
The report says: “The young men were left physically harmed and scarred by the beatings, bleeding badly, leaving blood on cushions and seats and having to wear adult nappies and bandages to prevent leaking of blood.”
Smyth beat his victims using a cane, usually in the garden shed of his Winchester home. A few years after the beatings began, a newly built, sound-proofed shed was placed further away from the house.
The abuse had a sexual nature: victims were partially or fully naked, and Smyth himself was either partially or fully naked while he administered the beatings. The recent report explains: “Smyth would drape himself over the victim, before and after the beating, sometimes kissing them on the neck or back.”
The following quotes from the survivors themselves are very graphic, and readers may wish to skip over them. They’re included to give full weight to the suffering of these young people:
I could feel the blood splattering on my legs.
I was struck 30–40 times with a cane across my bottom, sometimes the cane missed my bottom and connected with my thigh. The pain was so intense, my bottom was bleeding and despite it being red raw he would continue striking me. Each hit was very violent, and it was extraordinarily painful. Smyth was hitting me as hard as he could – he was sweating and exerting a lot of energy with each stroke.
When I was beaten 20 to 30 times, I could run my fingers up and down my bottom afterwards and I had a sense that each cane stroke had left its own mark on my body, however when I was beaten more than 30, or even as much as 100 times, there was no sense of any individual stroke marks on my buttocks, they were just a bloody mess.
John Smyth told me that my next [beating], which was going to mark my 21st birthday, was going to be special and more severe than those I’d suffered before. I thought this meant I was going to be getting two to three hundred strokes as I was aware by then that one of the other victims had been beaten with 400 strokes. I also knew that another victim had received an all-day beating of 800 strokes.
All of this abuse was carried out with an explicitly spiritual purpose. Smyth beat the boys to punish them for their supposed sins, based on a twisted misreading of Hebrews 12:4: “In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”
Cover-Up and Departure to Africa
When the leaders of Iwerne Holidays were informed of Smyth’s abuse in 1982, they compiled a detailed document that acknowledged the criminal nature of the beatings. They should have reported Smyth to the police. Instead, they allowed him to quietly leave the country.
Smyth and his family moved in 1984 to Zimbabwe, where he set up a new summer camp ministry and began abusing boys again. A 16-year-old named Guide Nyachuru died in 1992 in highly suspicious circumstances while attending one of Smyth’s camps. Smyth was charged with culpable homicide, but the case was discontinued due to the prosecutor having a conflict of interest. Smyth is suspected of abusing around 85 boys and young men in African countries while he was living in Zimbabwe.
Smyth moved again in 2001, this time to South Africa. He was still living in South Africa in 2017, when his past abuse in Britain was finally exposed by Channel 4 News. He died of a suspected heart attack 18 months later in August 2018, at the age of 75. A police investigation into his past crimes in Britain was by then underway, but in this world, Smyth was never held to account.
Justin Welby’s Involvement
Last Thursday, the Church of England published a report known as the Makin Review (named for its lead reviewer, Keith Makin). Initially, Archbishop Welby refused to resign, but five days later, in response to mounting public outrage at the contents of the report, he offered his resignation to King Charles.
Welby had attended the Iwerne camps as a young man and knew Smyth personally. According to Makin, Welby was warned about Smyth in 1981 (before Welby was ordained as a priest). Despite that warning, Welby continued exchanging Christmas cards with Smyth for several years. He also made financial donations to a trust set up by Smyth to fund the African camps.
Makin states that “Justin Welby became aware of the abuse alleged against John Smyth in around August 2013 in his capacity as Archbishop of Canterbury.” This was the result of attempts by a survivor of Smyth’s abuse, beginning in 2012, to bring the abuse to the Church of England’s attention. Church officials did then disclose the abuse, but their efforts were inadequate. Makin concludes that “from July 2013 … John Smyth should have been properly and effectively reported to the police in the UK and to relevant authorities in South Africa. This represented a further missed opportunity to bring him to justice and may have resulted in an ongoing and avoidable safeguarding threat.”
After Channel 4 publicly exposed Smyth’s abuse in 2017, Welby promised to meet with survivors. But it took four more years before Welby finally held that meeting. Between 2013 and 2024 not a single Church of England “Officer” (someone holding a formal Church-related post) was disciplined for failings related to the Smyth scandal.
In his resignation statement, Welby said, “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024.”
Reputation vs. Righteousness
When I think back to my attitude to the Roman Catholic child abuse scandal, I see that I was incredibly naive. Even wholehearted, Bible-believing evangelicals such as those involved with Iwerne Holidays can take exactly the same approach as the negligent Roman Catholic bishops: covering up abuse in order to protect the reputation of their ministry.
It’s impossible for me to deny this, because of my personal knowledge of Iwerne Holidays, the summer camp ministry at the heart of the scandal. I attended Iwerne camps for eighteen consecutive summers from 1994–2011 and was employed by Iwerne for three years from 2000–03. The gospel proclaimed at Iwerne was the same as the message of The Gospel Coalition. The Iwerne camps were prayerful, loving, and joyful, with deep reverence for Jesus and God’s Word. And yet Iwerne held a rotting secret at its core.
By the 1990s, newcomers to Iwerne such as myself had no knowledge of Smyth’s abuse, and we weren’t informed about it. The closest I ever came to learning about the abuse was when I was told that “something bad” had happened “a long time ago” in connection with the Christian group at Winchester College. But some of the most senior and well-respected leaders of the summer camps, whom I knew, and who returned to Iwerne year after year, were living with the knowledge that they’d let a monstrous abuser escape justice.
Some of the most senior and well-respected leaders of the summer camps, whom I knew, and who returned to Iwerne year after year, were living with the knowledge that they’d let a monstrous abuser escape justice.
One of those leaders, David Fletcher, who died in 2022, was arguably more responsible than anyone else for keeping Smyth’s abuse from being exposed. His reasoning is on record: “I thought it would do the work of God immense damage if this were public.” With a slight change of wording (“church” instead of “work”), that statement could have been made by any of the Roman Catholic bishops who covered up sexual abuse by parish priests.
Let us all be luminously clear about the folly of David Fletcher’s thinking: (1) God is able to protect his own work—Christ has promised to build his church (Matt. 16:18); (2) covered-up misconduct does vastly more damage than swiftly-revealed misconduct; and most importantly of all, (3) we don’t glorify God by unrighteousness. For those reasons among others, criminal abuse by Christians should be reported to the police immediately.
One of the many consequences of the unrighteous cover-up of Smyth’s abuse was the death of 16-year-old Guide Nyachuru. Guide would never have attended a Smyth camp in Zimbabwe if Smyth had been truly held to account in Britain.
The loss of earthly reputation can be frightening to contemplate. But God calls his people to live for his glory, which we do by seeking first his kingdom (not our own organization’s fame) and his righteousness.
The Gospel Coalition