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I can still smell the fog of his disgusting cigars. And the sickly sweet tonic with which he slicked back his hair. I was seven when it started. I am 60 this month. It is more than half a century ago, but that sort of abuse never leaves you. Coming home on the tube the other evening, I picked up a discarded newspaper. “Church’s 40-year abuser cover-up” read the front-page headline. It referred to a report by Keith Makin which laid out in horrific detail the crimes of John Smythe, the most prolific serial abuser ever to be associated with the Church of England. It also detailed the scandalous negligence of the Church leadership. I sat at home with the paper laid out on the dining room table, unable to hold back the years or the tears. I was a volcano of anger.
My experience was different from that of John Smythe’s victims. I don’t remember any sort of sexual or religious element. That said, my abuser was, like Smythe, an old school conservative evangelical in his theological disposition. And the gloomy chapel corridor was where we had to wait to be beaten. Smythe beat his often-naked victims in a sound-proofed shed at the bottom of his garden. I was never asked to strip. But to be alone, as a child, in the company of a sadist, was bad enough. My abuser had a range of canes behind his study door. The thin whippy ones would cut. The thicker ones would bruise. Six of the best was what people used to say. But it was rarely just six. Night after night I would go to bed with blood in my underpants. Many of us did.
I now have a son of seven — the same age I was when I was abused. This morning he is doing what children should be doing: playing with his Lego, kicking a football about, mucking around with his brother. I say this to explain that I have no calm objectivity about this subject. “It is better that a millstone were hanged around his neck and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea” was how Jesus described his feeling towards those who abuse children. It is not a very priestly thing to say, but even that feels too good for them.
Smythe died in 2018, having abused at least 115 children and young men. The report was commissioned in 2019 and many of us wondered if it would ever be published. Then, last week, it landed with all its horrifying detail. As Makin said: “Many of the victims have carried this abuse silently for more than 40 years.” And it concludes that Smythe was able to get away with abusing so many for so long because of a cover-up by what the report calls “powerful evangelical clergy” which may or may not have included the current Archbishop of Canterbury. “The report is clear that I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated,” Justin Welby said. After the full extent of Smythe’s crimes was documented by Channel 4 in 2017 Welby promised to meet with victims. But failed to make himself available to them until 2020, a full seven years after he had been officially told what had been going on. “This was wrong,” Welby has admitted.
Not wrong enough for him to resign, though. Last week, when asked if it was time to go, the Archbishop responded: “I’ve been giving that a lot of thought. I’ve taken advice as recently as this morning from senior colleagues and no, I’m not going to resign for this. If I’d known before 2013 or had grounds for suspicions, that would be a resigning matter then and now. But I didn’t.”
That Justin Welby knew nothing about the Smythe abuses before 2013 is, for many, hard to fathom. The report itself concludes that it is “unlikely that Justin Welby would have no knowledge of the concerns regarding John Smythe in the 1980’s in the UK”. Welby was a friend of Smythe, a voluntary “dormitory officer” on the Christian camps where it happened, he was in the circle of trust of Church of England evangelical Christians, and the knowledge of what was going on was widespread in those quarters. As early as 1981, reports were being written about what Smythe was up to. “The scale and severity of the practise was horrific,” one vicar wrote in the Eighties. “Eight received about 14,000 strokes, two of them having some 8,000 strokes over three years.” The young men who received these beatings would have talked to each other. Is it credible a dormitory officer, with some level of pastoral responsibility, would really be so unaware? Indeed, the whole thing was even spoken about publicly in sermons. It was, the Makin Report concludes, an “open secret amongst a whole variety of people connected with the Conservative Evangelical network”, and “badly kept”. So the Makin Report is surely correct soberly to conclude it is “unlikely” that Justin Welby didn’t know. And so, if he really did know, then this would be a resigning matter on Welby’s own admission.
“I’ve taken advice” says Welby, in justifying his decisison not to resign.
The fact that he even needed to take external advice about this matter tells us all that he’s not fit to wear the shirt. If your moral and ethical compass isn’t working reliably and you don’t know your own mind, you simply shouldn’t be the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Instead, he’s hanging on by his fingernails, like the odious careerist he increasingly seems to be.
I suspect that Welby sees himself as a ‘manager’ and therefore risen above the workings of his team. It’s a common misapprehension – most large organisations of any duration become captured by their internal careerists.
Following the precepts of the organisation rather than your own career prospects? How last millennium.
Robert Michels said this one hundred years ago. organisations become bureaucratic oligarchies , run for th benefit of those who control them which means the top three layers.
I see parallels with the noble Sir Keir. Starmer is a lawyer, who knows the law but hat has no sense of morality. Welby has ‘taken advice’ & been told there is no legal requirement for him to resign, which to me is proof he also has s0d all sense of morality
Let’s be honest: Welby IS the Church of England now. Vacuous, woke, progressive…and mostly secular. He doesn’t really believe in the City of God. The Reformation is a busted flush. Give the Catholic Church back its churches….Come back to Rome… We have our own liberal problem. Help us solve that together
The 500th anniversary of the Act of Supremacy (1534) is coming up soon. I do believe there will be serious discussion about reuniting the Anglican Church with the Roman Catholic church. But there are still a few doctrinal differences, which may be hard to reconcile, and doubtless there will be schisms and a breakaway Anglican church will stay separate.
The churches of England have always been and continue to be those of Ecclesia Anglicana. There can be no question of ‘giving them back’ to anybody.
Out of the frying pan into the fire there! Abuse in the Catholic Church is more rife than the Anglican one
Yeah, good plan! No kiddie fiddling in the Catholic Church! Oh, wait…..
The issue is why so many paedophiles and those who protect them become clergy and how to stop this happening.
Who did he ask?
if they are colleagues, they will tell him what he wants to hear.
they may also have reasons to support him: one goes, they all may go.
Question is; Who is fit to wear this particular shirt?
It is not just here where the Anglican Church needs to make amends. The disgraceful actions of Paula Vennels at the Post Office are also protected by an organisation which does nothing until forced to. As an ordained priest, she allowed hundreds of her employees to be hounded by her Post Office; at the same time, she was protected by the Bishop of St Albans. These two senior clergy are achieving a great deal in losing support for their church.
venals was just a simple theif – which is what christianity is based on – they’d rob their granny for a shilling – the Romans wisely executed jesus bin laden bin christos cos he was a theif/liar/crook..venals is the same – line on the left, one cross each.
Jesus died a voluntary death (He didn’t have to go to Jerusalem).
He died to save us – yourself included – from Hell.
Please stop insulting Him.
OMFG! – He was executed for insurrection by the Romans. He was a Che or Bin Laden of his day. Your view of jesus is based on the 1800 years of burnishing his story has benefitted from: First by the Romans – Byzantines too – then Charlemagne and the medievil absolute monarchs and finally by proddies and marxist “liberation theologians”.What society needs is peace, openness, stability and gradual, incremental change – trouble with disruptors like Jesus of Nazareth, Che Guevara and Yaya Sinwar is they don’t know what they want but they know how to get it. Because they want to destroy they can never build anything if they lived to be 1000. Christ is a great example – 2000 years on and still no justice for the people – so still no peace.
you have no idea, Mike. You confuse the corrupt goings on in the church with the basis of what Christ was about…which was a constant battle against corruption in all its forms. But perhaps, you glorify the achievements of Rome above all else.
Vennels was venal?
“We coveted no one’s gold or silver…” – The Apostle Paul.
Vennels was also shortlisted for Bishop of London. The question “Have they no shame?” is laughably easy to answer.
Shorlisted by Welby, no less. His own personal candidate.
Yes, they always support each other.
Birds of a feather flock together — old maxim.
I think it’s obvious that Giles is no fan of Justin Welby, but it’s also rather obvious that in 2013 there were well advanced standards on safeguarding.
I’m someone who’s been involved in safeguarding & caring for vulnerable children for over 30 years.
It’s hard to see Welby’s position as anything other than trying to protect the institution.
Ironically (& I’ve seen this with several institutions such as Social Services Departments) in the attempt to protect institutions those who do, might succeed in the short term, but the truth will always out, as they say.
The damage to the institution is always worse in the long term.
You only have to look at Ireland, where the church who once ruled to roost is now universally derided.
Priests now talk of mums holding their children close if they walk up the street in their clerical garb.
The vast bulk of these priests are genuine decent souls who wouldn’t harm a fly, but they’re victims of an institution that did its best to hide its scandals & therefore only made them worse.
I’ve no idea whether Justin Welby can survive this, but the Church of England has taken a major hit to its reputation that’s for sure.
But the bad guy here, John Smythe, was not a representative of the Church of England. I’m no fan of Justin Welby but I am even less of a fan of our endless guilt by association. It’s the era of Trump’s America, and I say we stop with the cancel culture.
It is NOT about protecting the institution but about protecting that person’s career, and money.
Such a heartfelt howl of anger from a man who knows the humiliation degradation & pain of abuse surely cannot go ignored by Justin Welby, as the C of E is revealed to be riven with hypocrisy & denial. Did it learn nothing from the revelations about the Catholic Church?
Why Welby had to ‘take advice’ rather than simply examine his own conscience is extraordinary. Going quietly & immediately was the only honest thing to have done.
First they came for Welby. Then a ‘sensitive conversation’ must be held about those Christians mis-subdivided as evangelicals. They ‘have a demon’, a psychologist declares, much like Jesus of Nazareth was described.
Unherd’s preacher shocks us with a blast of searing pain. Reeling and with mind numbed, how can anyone in the audience then promote or defend the toxicity of these evangelical beliefs? The insensitivity of them. The cruelty. The intolerance. Especially the conservative bits of the evangelical beliefs.
These Christian believers mis-subdivided as evangelicals (would the Apostle Paul have had anything to do with this factionalism of ‘the flesh’?) are the ones least likely to become suggestible. They are not going to be like a jelly poured into a mould. The block of jelly becoming a flower or a fish, or whatever the surrounding environment, the mould, is shaped as, such as a rainbow.
I would love to find some redeeming quality in religions but Welby? The cut of his jib? the money from oil futures trades he trousered? Did he pretend to “see the light” – if he didn’t give back his oil wealth then yes – he was a pretender – as i write this he has quit. If he did give it back then i will happily re-appraise my harsh views on him. Until then all i can see is one of a legion of privelaged poppinjays milking the public purse like the Catholic indulgence sellers in the 15th century. Was my tolerance a phase? Empathy, out of my way
Why did it take five years for this report to be published?
Five years of further pain for the victims and their families.
Five years for perpetrators to continue in their roles and receive the support of their congregations. And participate in State funerals and the Coronation.
Five years to find excuses.
Has any anybody taken any responsibility or paid any price for these actions?
Whether Justin Welby leaves now or completes his term feels almost irrelevant at this point.
Sadly the role of ‘Reports’, ‘Royal Commissions’, and ‘Inquiries’ is not to find the truth or propose ‘lessons to be learned’ but to insert sufficient time to defuse the anger. And dilute the blame.
Even if Welby did know nothing before 2013, he should resign for not contacting the police in 2013. Welby considers himself and the Church of England as above the law. It is not and he himself should be investigated by the police.
Thank you for this Giles. Of course he should go. Now.
Excuse my ignorance, but is this a British upper class thing in general? My sense as an observer from the States, it that casual sadism, mixed with homosexuality, has been a feature of the British elite for centuries. British Public schools, and elite institutions (including the Royal Navy) have followed the traditions that Churchill aptly described as “Rum, sodomy, and the lash” since the Reformation (at least). Any class that sends their 7 year old children into the care of institutions is asking for trouble.
No ignorance in your response Arthur, take that confirmation from one who was at one of those British public schools in the early 50’s. Albeit, not only the upper class, there were many ‘middle class’ (like me) going to middle and lower ranking public schools.
You are precisely correct and see what Revd Fraser cannot, being somewhat “to the manner born”.
The issue here is one of social deference and elite pederasty.
Or, as the sailors would have it,”Rum, bum and baccy”.
The version I’ve heard is ‘rum, bum and concertina’!
Yes this is a story about the upper class protecting themselves, rather than a failure of conservative evangelical theology. Giles’ liberal theology certainly isn’t going to save the Church of England.
Just like two tier apparently knew nothing about the Rochdale scandals. These people are beyond wicked and should be routed out of office and indeed society. Enough harm has been done to ordinary people because of their unhealthy beliefs and peccadillos.
Yet for some unknown reason, they portray themselves as the good ones, and that they are the only people fit to govern. Why do so many people still believe this? It completely floors me.
All they seem to say is that it would be worse under the right leaning lot. How?! For heaven’s sake.
This has done irreparable damage to the Anglican Church which is now compromised in the same way as the Roman Church is; with all priests being seen as potential abusers and the church a safe place to practice their evil deeds.
Normal vicars who genuinely want the best for their flock must be in despair. Don’t ask him to resign, sack him immediately!
Welby has nothing to do with Christianity.
Sadly, he has a great deal to do with Christianity.
Christianity is like socialism – not well served by its adherents.
A difficult read.
One which naturally elicits sympathy, whilst also providing significant insights into the workings of the Anglican church and some of the individuals who seek authority within it – right to the very top of the pile.
The relationship between guilt and the apparent need for redemption is laid bare, both among abusers and the abused.
The author, well-known to regular readers of Unherd, shows great courage and one would only hope that his exposė has some effect in bringing to an end the centuries-old ways in which those who exploit their positions to either do harm, or turn a blind eye to it, are fostered.
The Archbishop of Canterbury declared that the motivation for setting up a fund to address the Church of England’s links with slavery came from ‘the presence of the risen Christ alive in the church’.
That presence doesn’t seem to have motivated any attempt to deal effectively and justly with the abuse of children.
The man who was unexpectedly appointed Bishop of Durham in 1901 by Lord Salisbury was an evangelical. There’s nothing in the records of his extensive preaching that he preached Christianity as shame, or emphasised the fear of punishment over hope. He didn’t promote chastising the body to save the soul, or what has been called ‘Crosstianity’.
Though it’s his own account, he described bringing up his two children in the manner of never speaking dismissively of anyone in their, the children’s, presence.
By the end of the 19th century Christianity had largely come to be seen as a means of social improvement. In this view, Christianity described a ‘fall upwards’. It was evangelicals such as the Bishop of Durham who reminded the saints of the ‘faith once delivered to the saints’. ‘The world cannot be educated into holiness’, he wrote.
Jesus of Nazareth held children up as exemplars of the kingdom of heaven. Small children copy their parents exactly and trust them implicitly. In the Gospels, this is Jesus’s own stated relationship with His Father in heaven. Additionally, and similarly to Jesus’s own example, when small children are engaged in any task, they display a formidable single-mindedness.
Amen to all of that. I’m a little apalled that after such a heartfelt piece the Rector of Kew would proceed to use this lamentable crime as a device to advance his own vision of churchmanship.
When Welby talks about the church’s links to slavery, he is talking about his own family and the need for all of us to make amends. Not my family Welby. We didn’t commission slave trading as the Welby family did, most of our families worked for a pittance in lousy conditions with cold, hunger and dire poverty to contend with. We were little better off than slaves. Does he (along with many others) think that the native English were all posh and rich? A tiny handful of people from the beginning of the Industrial Revolution until well into the twentieth century were reaping the rewards of keeping the vast majority of the working class poor and desperate. The only social safety net available was the horror of the workhouse. Go away and live on your private income Welby. I am no socialist but I get angry when privileged people stain me with their own sins.
Extremely well said!
‘Stain me with their own sin’. Very well put. He must go.
This is a strange and discordantly instrumental end to an essay full of personal insight. A system of theology must be judged on its own merits, not the actions of criminals who use it as a vehicle and a veil for their wickedness.
That such wickedness should have concealed itself beneath the skirts of pretended piety, in any case, is no marvel. “The Devil himself is transformed into an angel of light”. It is the way these things happen. In Revd Frasers time it manifested itself in the guise of lying, canting, false establishment evangelicals. it can just as easily use Christian Mysticism or Antinomian libertinism, which appears to me to be mask he wears in our own day. It matters little what system of theology is ascendant at any one time. Evangelical or Liberal, Calvinist, Methodist, Protestant or Catholic. “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one”
Fortunately, Christ has given us a great weapon in the church of England in our inherited, though regretfully overlooked, rejection of “Priestcraft”. It is encoded in law in our articles of religion – Article XXVI: Of the unworthiness of the ministers – “it appertaineth to the discipline of the Church that inquiry be made of evil ministers”
That there is nothing special or inviolate about the person of the minister is a central tenet of Anglican ecclesiology. It is the great bulwark against corruption in holy places. That the minister is a sinner and more especially under assault from the wiles of the Enemy is an actual article of faith.
Speaking as a communicant member of the Church of England with two young children I draw thankfully on what might be called conservative evangelicalism, in my own life and religion. JC Ryle and that sort of thing.
Ryle, and his followers insistently point out that the elevated treatment of ministers, the holy father trope, is a harmful superstition. “Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven.”
The reverence given to ministers of religion is an inheritance of secular social deference, not true conservative evangelical ecclesiology, whose rule is the life of Jesus Christ.
The uncritical regard given to ‘whited sepulchres‘ in every generation, is the chief means that these abusers always use to work their wickedness.
Very well said. I was intending to post something on this general topic, and already had J.C. Ryle in mind as one of the truly godly examples of “what might be called conservative evangelicalism.” But you’ve put it so well that I will say no more on that aspect of this sorry, sordid tale.
Thank you!
This is just one of many reasons why the bureaucrat Welby must go. His distain for the native English in his church is turning many people away, particularly men. He has been a disaster for the church, partisan, political, woke and feeble. Get out now Welby before things turn ugly for you. You have lost any authority to lead, your supposed spirituality is absent. It won’t be long until you are being heckled in public. Is that a good look?
Have you ever stopped to consider that the reason people stop going to Church is that it involves listening to a boring guy in silly clothes drone on about what it says in the bible, and then all singing some dreary hymns? That is certainly my recollection of it from when I still used to accompany my mother to it as a child. Needless to say, I quickly decided that there was nothing for me in that place.
Baptised and confirmed Anglican, I have had one foot out the door in recent times. This tragedy might spell the end for me and the few of us who remain faithful to the church.
Actually, did you heat that snapping noise? That was my hamstring. At this moment I can’t run fast enough. May God forgive them all. I’ll struggle.
I share your horror and your despair but, in my case, it matters little who occupies the chair in Canterbury.
I try to love God and neighbour, love and keep my wife, raise my children in the fear and love of the lord and “do my duty in that state of life, unto which it has pleased God to call me”, as our catechism says.
After that, I have the poems of Herbert and the beauty of our liturgy and churches to console me. Why would I, why should I, feel compelled to depart all that because of coruption in high places?
Hello William. You are correct, of course. I have to keep reminding myself that it is our church as much if not more than it belongs to those whose frightful behaviour and ludicrous opinions constantly compel me to leave. I’m not going anywhere. I’m just going to kneel where prayer has been valid. I see your Herbert and raise you a T S Eliot.
Where two or three are gathered together ….
Why not four, or five … ?
It’s the problem of hierarchy, and then of power …
Institutional survival versus vigorous investigation of individual, and/or corporate, responsibility is a perennial and widespread challenge: from abuses within the Church(es), and other faith institutions, to the millions spent by the NHS on covering-up errors of medical and HR judgement, we often find it easier to focus on the particular abuse or abuser than the general, systematic issues.
Might such ‘cover-ups’ be justified? I suppose if one could be sure that the individual case really was an awful ‘one-off’ but, so often, if not the ‘tip of the iceberg’, we find that there are multitudes of cases. It is also the reality that the act of ‘covering-up’ makes the organisation complicit; it has, in effect, bought into a lie about its stated values and the reality. At some point, this tends to emerge and the very thing that the cover-up was designed to achieve, institutional survival, is actually more imperilled: a dilemma Justin Welby and the C of E now face.
I’ve read that exposing the cover-up is usually more harmful than the original failure.
“But this is not just about Justin Welby personally.” That paragraph itself resonates powerfully with me and I suspect many Unherd readers.
One wonders what it will take to get rid of Welby. He clings on, impervious, like a deep seated verruca. He appears to be proof against anything short of a nuclear blast. He is the cockroach of the cassock.
The King, as head of the C.o E., should have a quiet word in Welby’s ear.
Dear Giles, I am deeply sorry that your life was horribly damaged by such a hateful and utterly vile man. I cannot abide these selfish creatures who ruin the lives of boys and men by their torture of them in childhood. I am a mother, once a Teacher and extremely aware of how precious children are. Those of us who have care of them are extremely blessed and hold a great responsibility for we have so much power. We can make or ruin their lives. It is a salutary thought. Any Leader who does not hold this responsibility towards the power to protect children as the most important in their power, should never be in any position of leadership.
While in my 30s I was raped by a CofE clergyman who carefully planned to get me on my own, forcibly poured alcohol into me and raped me. He later became a Bishop. I reported this as an historic case. At the time I knew his incredible facility to lie would have made me seem the perpetrator. I feared and utterly loathed him. The CofE attempted to bring the nasty clergyman, who had been party to other sexual abuses on children, to book. But my rape, though believed, was regarded as difficult to prove. Of course I still find this terribly distressing. I think it was an obviously deliberate, planned attack on me that can be proved. None the less, through the courage of another of his victims, he was defrocked and a lesser demeanour he did to me was accepted.
I still have not recovered from it. I do not know if we are designed to recover from such abuse of our person. It was nothing like the repeated abuse that poor children suffer at the hands of evil perverts.
Justin Welby bothers me. I was unable to accept his attack that it was ‘immoral’ not to have the covid injection. God gave us a marvelous immune system. The covid injections have been proved to destroy it, with people who had them, catching covid more often and dying in higher numbers than those who did not have them.
The C of E had the opportunity at its division from Rome to set itself right before God and become a Church that serves Him according to his laws. It failed to do so. If it truly wanted to be a church of God we would keep the Sabbath and worship the Lord on the Seventh Day, that is Saturday.
I am distressed that the vast majority of ‘Christian’ Churches throughout the world do not follow the Bible. In fact most have altered the Bible to deliberately remove references to Jesus’ divinity and God’s almighty power in creation. For centuries church leaderships have taught their clergy to raise the children to worship according to the Church’s ideas, which are often augmented with practices and symbols from other religions and satanism, and are contrary to the word of God as written in the Bible. This means that the Church Leaders are knowingly leading their flock away from God so that at the day of reckoning their people will not be among those who have served the Lord and kept his commandments. This is a most horrendous sin, to deliberately mislead people so they are taken away from God. I believe God will pardon all those who innocently followed these corrupt Leaders. But how He will deal with the people at the top of these Churches is another matter. They have no excuse for not knowing the Bible.
There was a lot of mindless abuse and caning of boys in boarding schools up and down the land, not to the extent of that administered by Smythe, but brutal nevertheless.
What’s more it was accepted, not only by one’s parents but by the middle class, who considered it ‘the making of the boy’
Times change thankfully !
That was my initial thought. But I am unaware of the misdeeds alleged here. Was it sexual abuse? Or merely corporal punishment taken to extremes? If the later then is this an example of contemporary enlightenment demonizing what was within normalcy a couple generations ago? I was beat by parents and at school, and rightly so.
In state schools too caning was rife.
Fraser’s words are powerful. I sometimes find those involved in safeguarding in schools can be excessive; sometimes pushing agendas, sometimes looking for more money and power. Safeguarding people are no more saints than you or me.
But then writing like this brings me up short. If there’s excess, it has to be in the direction in which there is more chance that children will be protected. We have to live with over-zealous child protection teams and excessively bureaucratic HR. There’ll be waste and there’ll be innocent adults harmed but we have no choice; children have to be protected from cruel people.
Never mind those “innocent adults harmed” then?
Fair point
There are two contrasting views of resignation at play here:
1) JW views resignation as punishment – something forced upon the guilty. Since he believes he’s innocent, he sees no reason to resign. 2) However, resignation can be viewed through a deeper spiritual lens – as a selfless act of sacrifice for a greater good. This view is powerfully exemplified in Christianity’s central story:
Jesus’s crucifixion provides the perfect model. Though completely innocent, He willingly gave up His life not as punishment, but as a profound act of love and sacrifice for others. This transforms our understanding of resignation from a mark of guilt into something noble – a voluntary surrender of one’s position or privileges for the healing and restoration of a community.
Just as Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t about His guilt but about His love, resignation doesn’t have to be about admitting fault. Rather, it can be about placing the needs of others and the health of the church family above one’s own position or rights.
This surely can’t be the very same Justin Welby who scolds us all so piously about not being kind and inclusive enough, can it?
Of course it can and the lesson we should draw from this episode is one we shouldn’t need repeating, yet somehow do.
When any person, institution or interest group demands that it is treated as above scrutiny, then it is hiding something pretty horrible.
Indeed.
To quote Stanislaw Lem :
‘Behind every glorious facade there is always hidden something ugly.’
A lot of ambitious men calling for the resignation of another ambitious man. I won’t hold my breath.
John Milton had the likes of Welby bang to rights;
“How well could I have spar’d for thee, young swain,
Enow of such as for their bellies’ sake
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold?
Of other care they little reck’ning make
Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast
And shove away the worthy bidden guest.
Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold
A sheep-hook, or have learn’d aught else the least
That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs!
Giles Fraser is right. Welby has to go. He must have known about this sadist long ago and it is the habit of covering-up, as in the RC Church, the BBC etc which is doubly damaging. A briliiant article by Fraser. The memory, the very smell, of the abusers’ behaviour, NEVER LEAVES YOU.a.n.wilson
Please forgive the typo. I’m shaking. My fingers are out of control. The rest of me soon to follow.
My memories are also more than half a century old – and minor in comparison – but Giles is right, they never quite go away: I still tread with heightened awareness and skin-crawling caution around men wearing the clerical collar.
If Welby doesn’t resign, it would be inspiring if all those calling for his resignation tendered their own instead.
If he did know about this stuff, all those years ago, then he’s either inclined to this behaviour himself or he’s a man of low moral character (for not reporting it). Either way, not fit for his role. The evidence is piling up he DID know before 2013. But, even if he is innocent, he should resign for the good of the Church he professes to lead.
Oh, and FWIW, he seems to me a corporate apparatchik.
There are broadly three sorts of Christian Priests: 1) those who have committed abuse. 2) those who have assisted in the covering up of abuse by their colleagues. 3) those who have turned a blind eye to the commission of abuse by their colleagues.
Smyth. The man’s name was John Smyth.
There are important issues at stake here, personal and institutional, but it does undermine the strength of your case a little if you can’t get the name of the perpetrator right.
John Smyth QC, a barrister who worked in the British Justice system, yet wasn’t prosecuted by it. Imagine that.
The barrister, John Smyth QC.
Oh well – quien sabe? christianos estan paedos? the proddy ones too. Oil well -be is an animal who needs to be put to sleep. He is an apostate who rejects our lord Jesus Christ, His father and La Hostia. His support for and association with homosexual paedophiles marks his anti-christian ideology. His support for violent islamist terror against Jews, Christians, Bahai, Kurds and Yazidi mark what this animal is – rapist – paedo – homo.
he has a poor track record when it comes to friends-take another evangelical as in Paula Reynolds. Welby has admitted to liking talking in tongues. A true convert, meanwhile the property portfolio that the C of E is these days carries on and forgets what its there for. Excellent article and hope Giles is OK? Hell for children, from dirty, dirty men. God forgive them, nothing to do with JC.
I have always thought that the mortal man who subsequently became known as Jesus Christ came back to life and saw the churches created in his name, he would say “You morons! You misunderstood everything!”
Unfortunately, the clerical life is attractive to people such as John Smythe, because the Church (or Churches, if you prefer) is flummoxed by them. Even discharging them once they are found out reflects badly on the institution, notwithstanding that churchmen want to offer hope and be forgiving. What Smythe and others did cannot be undone, but present and future children need to be protected from their like. Humility on the part of those in charge seems to be the only answer. Welby’s resignation would be a step in the right direction.
Why are we surprised. Religion of all stripes and denominations are institutions of control. Abuse of all disgusting sorts has always existed in them. As Gandhi once said, “I admire Jesus, although I have problem with his followers”. Of course Gandhi was no saint in certain regards.
Of course Gandhi was no saint in certain regards.
What do you mean?
He wasn’t very nice to his wife for a start.
I don’t propose to defend Welby, but the problem isn’t just him. The entire CofE itself is to blame. It should be disestablished and left to die. I’m not even going to get started on the Catholic Church….
Absolutely not. Being the established church ensures all Parishioners are entitled to a wedding or funeral in their local C of E church and also brings evangelicals and Catholics together in one church who would otherwise not be there.
Now yes Welby and the C of E leadership at the time were at fault in not following up these allegations more quickly and he should resign. However the BBC, Harrods, boarding schools, the RC church, even the Scouts and football clubs have all been hit by having abusers in their ranks, especially from the pre safeguarding era that was a problem they had
The CofE has always been a social club for the Middle Class masquerading as a religious institution. Maybe if it totally gave up the “religion” bit (as some contend it has), it would be less objectionable. As to “weddings and funerals at the CofE”, that is a benefit to the increasingly small minority of the population who are protestant Christians.
Yes he must.
As ever God botherers get involved in amd cover up child abuse.
Though godless people do so more frequently.
I sit in my Church on a Sunday morning reciting vacuous words as an act of Worship. I complain about it to my wife but I continue to attend.We have a woke female vicar and ‘climate change’, net zero, and all other far left issues of the moment aired constantly.
I’m afraid my only rebellion is to use the correct words of the Lords Prayer!
Welby must resign and perhaps we can move back to Christianity in its true sense.
I was regular physically and sexually abused through my childhood, I was raped by a male maths tutor when I was 11 and 3/4 years old. Nearing my 8th decade there has been no remittance or parole to that life sentence. Strange to say when I reported the abuse and rape, I was told ‘surly it wasn’t that bad’, the same tawdry language Welby uses today. No adult responsible for such abuse, either perpetrator, guardian, or manager should be allowed to avoid their responsibility.
‘They say’ ‘if you remember the sixties, you weren’t really there.’
For some, a decade scented by smoked lemongrass, pine, fire, and sandalwood, of wading through strong, musty, fogs of pale blue earthy and floral flavoured smoke, a world of beautiful long-haired people, some further fragranced by pretty flowers, often worn in their hair, as they progressed to San Francisco or to Woodstock, or to the Isle of White festival, who attended peace and civil rights marches, giving their love, and their sex openly and freely uninhibited they rebelled and marched to protest against the Vietnam war, to support Civil Rights, people who were ‘right on, hip and with it, man.’
Willim remembers the sixties, just not those sixties, on those terms.
Somewhere in the hills of the English Countryside, a crying sky’s tears run down the dark, forbidding face of a Catholic boarding school for boys aged eight to thirteen.
It is six o’clock on a Friday evening, late in April 1967, the end of the first week of the summer term and a few weeks after Sandie Shaw won the Eurovision Song Contest, with a song describing a woman’s manipulation by a lover as he used the threads of love to control her, a song titled ‘Puppet on a String’.
———————————————————————-
You stand rigid, as if bolted to the floor as his high shrill voice, badgering and directing, grates along the corridor, announcing his impending arrival.
Fear, his study, reeks of primal, animalistic fear, a sense of loneliness, of abandonment, visceral, you taste the bile rising in your throat. The stench in the room is yours, yours, and that of the many boys who previously stood riveted to this spot.
At exactly eleven years and four weeks of age, time has little meaning.
A minute may as well be an hour, as an hour might be a lifetime.
At this moment, and as always, you wish time would stand still. Better yet, unglued from this spot, time would pass you by. Like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, you wish this cup would pass you by, yet like him, you know it will not, it cannot. If you dared to suggest that analogy out aloud, he would, without a moment’s hesitation, deal with you again on Monday.
Too young to comprehend, abandoned by all, and isolated, in this moment of dread fear, you are bound to this, your singular existential crisis.
Look: no, you dare not look.
You dare not look at the roll-top desk that houses the purpose-built rack, the rack that holds six canes, graded from top to bottom by their thickness, by their potential, by their caress, by their inanimate, indifferent, and ultimately by their brutality.
A diffident, thick, meaty bamboo cane lies unused at the top; while at the hell end of the rack, a long, thin, sadistic, snake-like whip eagerly awaits life, a life only gained in the Headmaster’s hand.
As he enters the room, you focus on a windowpane that freely runs with tears, tears that partly obscure woods where you often go to hide, and at the low backed armchair set neat and square in the middle of the window’s recess, a chair likely never sat in, its sole purpose being to support the weight of boys.
‘Here we are again, Mr Jackson. You know why you are here?’ he will enquire.
‘I failed the spelling test, sir.’
‘That’s a lie. You are here because, as usual, you failed to learn. It seems you never learn.’
Opening the desk, home to his torture implements, he will ask, ‘which cane would you like this evening?’ don’t be fooled, no matter what your choice, he will use the sadistic snake.
‘Drop your shorts, bend over the chair, look out the window.’ As you have done many times in the past, you do as you are told.
He is close; he examines your body, making sure you have nothing down your pants that might interfere with his ‘care’.
You hear him breathing, feel the warmth on the bare skin of your back, your thighs, and legs.
A few steps to one side, poised, snake in hand, arm raised above his head, he is ready to strike.
A downward swish, a crack, the whack, contact.
The snake lands on your bottom, curling and wrapping itself around your body, its fangs digging into the delicate skin of your bottom, your thigh.
The dam broken; you dissolve, feelings, emotions released, a bellowed furnace of fire takes its grip, you gasp for air, your nose runs, your face floods.
Three more, maybe five?
He will stop when he feels he has had the response he expects to his God given right to care, to judge and to punish.
As you pull your shorts up and turn round, he says,
‘Real men don’t cry, Mr Jackson. Stop your snivelling, go upstairs, get matron to sort you out.’
You shake his hand, saying, ‘Thank you, sir.’
The headmaster replies, ‘Yes.’ Pauses, then irritably, in his shrill domineering voice, says, ‘Go on, get out.’
While the matron attends to your blooded backside, your tears dry, leaving white train tracks on your cheeks. In the intimate close comfort of her undivided attendance, feeling the softness of her touch, you hear her gently weep, and wonder, ‘Why? Why would anyone bother, let alone care? Decades later, you will come to realise that your childhood lacked any recognisable threads of human love, instead being dominated by sadistic, abusive, life-destroying puppet masters who forced you to accept and love an abused, tortured, and crucified Christ as his redeemer and savour.
The adrenaline ebbs away, now cold, you shiver, still the pain and the humiliation echo through your brain, your body.
In a few days’ time, the red, green, and blue-coloured evidence of your punishment will disappear and turn black. Hiding your emotions from the other boys, telling tall tales of how much it didn’t hurt and how you didn’t cry, will have become easier through experience than it is to sit on the school’s hard wooden chairs.
That night in your dormitory, after lights out, wishing that you could talk to the one who really cares and understands, your family dog, you cry yourself to sleep and like a puppet on a string, you bravely think, ‘it’s only another five Friday evenings until half term.’
Horrifying account. What really shocks me is that parents paid to send their offspring into these dens of sadism…and, as identified in your account, it was known by the staff in the school.
Like you imply it must be hard for him to give up the shining robes and the fancy hat. He’ll get his true judgment one day; in this at least he must believe
It seems so strange that Justin Welby was so ready to prostrate himself at Amritsar on behalf of the C of E, ready to pay out millions in ‘reparations’, willing to remove monuments from churches in case of ‘offence’, and yet when it comes to the most appalling crimes committed under his watch an apology is all that is offered. There is something very very wrong with that.
Giles Fraser should check his reckless and prejudiced attack on conservative evangelicals and their theology and try to remember that it was evangelicals under Wilberforce, who ended slavery and under Shaftesbury, that the evils of the Industrial Revolution were mitigated. Anything wrong with their theology? Then, has there been no child abuse in other parts of the church, Catholic, Liberal etc or in the secular world? Plus, the psychologist he quotes rather parodies evangelical theology and seems a little out of her depth . Not that I am a fan of the Iwerne camps, but knowing a little about the kind of people who went to them, would judge that the appalling John Smythe was not typical and yes, he should have been stopped sooner. Lastly are people getting as angry about what is happening to trans teens, the drugs the surgery, about whom the C of E seems fairly unconcerned?
The Church of England, under Welby’s stewardship, has become a church in England.
The clergy at St.Mary’s in the parish of Great Chesham, hardly ever fly the flag of St. George, or the Union flag, though the clergy at St.Mary’s, Amersham, do so regularly.
Why is that an issue?
I have wondered for a long time whether Welby even believes in God. As a bean counter by profession, he would be very familiar with the odds against His existence absent faith.
“My experience was different from that of John Smythe’s victims. I don’t remember any sort of sexual or religious element.”
Whipping small boys with a succession of canes? Er…..?
I guess it depends what you mean by ‘sexual’.
““Apology, after apology, after another bloody apology will not do!”
Reminds me of some Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police.
Thank you for making yourself vulnerable like this. I completely agree with your point that it is crucial to draw attention, to underlying theological issues.
After completing my RBT on the spirituality of the abused – which cost me dearly – I found it impossible to remain a public representative within a church that largely ignored it.
I’m still angry 12 years later.
But I’m going to be bold and offer here the assessment of Professor John N. Sheveland, current Flannery Chair in Catholic theology at Gonzaga University in Spokane, that my “scholarship establishes the theological agenda and also the possibility of ecclesial authenticity” in his article Redeeming Trauma: an Agenda for Theology 15 Years On,” in American Catholicism: Crossroads, Crisis, or Renewal? (Orbis, 2018), p147.
‘If you will not go for the love of the institution, if you will not go for the love of its people and priests, if you will not go for the victims, if you will not go for reasons of your own embarrassment or shame, then I pray you; for love of God, and Him alone, go.” Good to see the Vicar of Charlbury puts the interests of the institution and its priests ahead of those of the victims.
What an unreasonable comment. What makes you think that they are listed in decreasing order of importance – with God presumably therefore as the least important of all?
Yes, of course, they are listed in ascending hierarchy. The organisation, the innocent victims, the immortal soul, God the creator of that soul.
I wonder whether we’ll hear that this one “never crossed his desk”?
We’ll know who he’s been taking advice from should that explanation appear.
The very nature of your abuse as a child, Giles must have alerted some antenna. As a Vicar, or even before, How did you lobby the church about this issue which has clearly been swept under the carpet by the leadership. Everyone with a role in the church has responsibility to stamp out any possibility, or call out any suspicious circumstances instantly. Apologies if you have been instrumental in this battle.
Justin Welby must and should resign. The report makes horrific reading and he must have been well aware of the terrible abuse that took place. Perhaps it’s about time he faced up to the findings in this report rather than virtue signaling about the climate, reparations and other current woke obsessions.
UnHerd subscriber
Welby like Starmer has no interest in his flock. He sees himself as a colouss on the World stage.
He is a total fraud and not even a Christian another WEF stooge destroying Britain
“a cover-up by what the report calls “powerful evangelical clergy””
Sometimes the problem is weak clergy and a domineering abuser, who can actually intimidate someone of senior rank. I believe that happened in a local case.
Looks like oil-well-be is “one of them” – never mind his sick pal “venal” and her post office thieving this guy is in his own league. An animal along the lines of sutcliffe or the Krays – this POS needs to admit his deviance. IMO inhuman deviates like welbie need to be deported to KSA or Iran where they know how to deal with ppl like that.
He’ll be out by the end of the week.
A fish rots from the head.
The D of Wellington said England’s greatest asset is her honesty. This requires courage( moral and physical). A nation led by those who are courageous, honest and industrious will do well.One needs to be courageous, honest and and industrious to be competent.
Courage, honesty and industriousness appear largely absent in those who lead Britain.
Much as I sympathise with victims of sex abuse, especially prepubescent children, I believe John Smyth’s victims were in their late teens. Assuming they were reluctant to submit to his treatment (which is not a foregone conclusion) I think they were rather daft and weak willed to let it happen. They must have known it was a highly unconventional and ludicrously outdated approach to atoning for sins, if that was the spurious justification Smyth claimed.
For me, the most regrettable result of his little hobby is that when his activities became more widely known it discredited the Christian summer camps at Swanage and Ewerne Minster, and may have contributed to the decision to close these.
I’m not sure why these camps ended. Possibly there were financial motives such as Clayesmore, the public school where the camp for older boys were held, having to host more lucrative educational ventures over the summer holidays, such as international language schools. Also, the elitist nature of the camps (admitting only boys at prep and public schools) probably didn’t help in our more egalitarian times. All the same, it was a damned shame they closed. I and most boys had a lot of fun at them in the 1960s and 1970s, with never a hint of sexual abuse by any of the dedicated volunteers (which at some time included none other than Justin Welby!)
Quite possibly the most disgusting comment I think I’ve ever read on UnHerd.
You’re saying it’s the kids fault for “letting” themselves be abused, and the abuse is fine (never mind all the lives it damages) as long as the reputation of the Church remains intact?
Are you Justin Welby in disguise?
You’re joking right? Sexual abuse by an authority figure is less bad when perpetrated on a child who isn’t prepubescent? Seriously?