Private Eye
“CHURCH NEWS – SILENT TREATMENT” – PRIVATE EYE [NO. 1534 – 6 NOVEMBER-19 NOV 2020 – PAGE 41]
IN August we reported that the Church of England was dealing with a complaint against Archbishop Justin Welby (Eye 1529). The complaint alleged that Welby had failed to act on information he received in 2013 about abuse by his friend John Smyth QC.
A victim of Smyth had disclosed his abuse to the church in 2012, and the information was passed to Welby in August 2013 by the Bishop of Ely. The details arrived at Lambeth Palace via Welby’s chaplain, along with a note pointing out that Smyth was an old camping buddy of the archbishop.
Welby chose not to report the abuse to the police or social services, leaving it to Ely to eventually do the job. So confident was he that the right thing to do was to do nothing that he didn’t consult his safeguarding advisers, or even pick up the phone to his old friend Smyth to ask what was it all about.
The complaint also raised the question of, er, mis-statements that Welby has made about the case in the past couple of years, such as his assertion to Channel 4 News that Smyth was not an Anglican at all [he was], and that Welby had written to the Archbishop of Cape Townto warn him of the abuser on his patch [he hadn’t].
Saints be praised, the Eye learns that the complaint against Welby has now been dismissed. The core group of church staff formed to adjudicate on their boss decided that whatever he had done or left undone in 2013 is not a safeguarding matter and so doesn’t need to be investigated. Nor does the question of his untrue statements on the case. The only thing that matters is whether Welby is likely to cause harm today, and they concluded that he currently poses as much risk as a damp flannel.
Whatever one’s views on whether archbishops should tell the truth, it’s hard to see why Welby’s failure to act on a report of abuse by an old friend doesn’t constitute a safeguarding risk – especially since that 72-year-old friend was continuing to induce young men to share naked showers with him and swap masturbatory tips.
Smyth had managed to evade justice in the UK and then in Zimbabwe, where he is thought to have abused as many as 90 children.
By the time of his death in 2018, Hampshire Police had asked Smyth to return to the UK for questioning. In the five years between Welby’s documented knowledge of the abuse and his friend’s death, Smyth had made at least two visits to the UK, in March 2014 and December 2016, during which he could presumably have been arrested and his abuse stopped.
If Welby was not at fault for failing to act on what he knew about Smyth, presumably he will now feel no need to fess up to what he knows about other abusive friends, such as Revd Jonathan Fletcher (Eye 1499).
He clearly disagrees with the witness who told the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) last year:
“Nobody can say ‘it is not my fault’. It is so absurd. 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, yet alone a leadership response”
That witness was Archbishop Justin Welby.
Archbishop Justin Welby
“the core group, specially chosen [they say ‘formed’] from Archbishop Welby’s staff, decided to try to bury it!” – CH
The Bell Society 