How a cover-up forced the Archbishop of Canterbury from office

The story that culminated in the unprecedented resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury began with a misplaced letter.

The source who first alerted me to the John Smyth scandal in 2016 did so by post – and his missive went to the wrong office.

When I finally received it, my source told me he had seen a documentary I made about a British sex offender, Simon Harris, and said he might have a story in a similar vein.

When we met he produced a brown envelope containing a series of extraordinary documents detailing the beatings inflicted on boys and young men by John Smyth, now acknowledged as the Church of England’s most prolific serial abuser.

This dossier of abuse had been put together by a Cambridge vicar called Mark Ruston in 1982, not long after a boy attempted to take his own life rather than face another beating. And as my source explained – senior Church people knew about Smyth’s barbaric activities and had failed to do enough to stop him.

Indeed, for decades, the Church had participated in a devastating cover-up. With the bravery of the victims I was about to put all of this in the public domain.

Reports of John Smyth’s abuse

With Channel 4 News’ then head of investigations, Job Rabkin, I began what became a six month investigation spanning 40 years and three different countries.

Documentary maker Tom Stone and my investigations colleague Guy Basnett started to track down the men who, as schoolboys at Winchester College, had been beaten by Smyth in a specially constructed shed in his garden. It was soundproofed so the neighbours wouldn’t hear the cries of agony emanating from within.

Andy Morse was the boy who had been told by Smyth he needed a “special beating” for his 21st birthday. He didn’t think he could bear it so he decided to take his own life. Fortunately his friends found him and saved his life, but he lives now in the shadow of what was done to him.

It was shortly after Andy’s suicide attempt that the Iwerne Trust, a charity which organised the Christian summer camps run by Smyth in east Sussex, commissioned the Reverend Ruston to write the report that was handed to me.

Some victims, like Andy, didn’t want to go on camera, for understandable reasons. Another, who we’ve called “Graham”, remains anonymous to this day.

Andrew Graystone, a former BBC producer who has become an advocate for the victims, was brilliant connecting us with contacts and explaining the arcane goings on of the Church of England.

And we had a breakthrough when one victim, former vicar Mark Stibbe, agreed to meet me at the St Albans Starbucks just off the M25. It was 7 November 2016, the day before Donald Trump was elected president.

When he agreed to do the interview, he spoke of Smyth’s forceful personality, being groomed by him and invited for Sunday lunch at his house in Winchester.

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What we discovered was disturbing. Richard Gittins, for example, disclosed that he and other boys were beaten so hard they were given nappies.

And we found out that after abusing boys and young men here in the UK, Smyth had left in disgrace for Zimbabwe in 1984, where he started grooming children all over again – with deadly consequences.

Edith Nyachuru met me for coffee in a little cafe in Southend-on-Sea, where she was working as a nurse. She told me how she found out that her brother Guide had died in a swimming pool at one of Smyth’s summer camps in Zimbabwe. She’d received an early morning phone call from Zambesi Ministries, the organisation Smyth had set up and bankrolled in part by British donors, including, we now know, some modest donations from Justin Welby himself.

Confronting John Smyth

At the time of our investigation, Smyth was living in South Africa, and there was a very real risk that he was continuing to abuse victims there.

By the end of the year, we’d drafted in two more colleagues from across the newsroom – Andy Lee and Ed Howker – and we’d gathered copious quantities of evidence to try and hold Smyth to account.

The head of investigations Job Rabkin was born in South Africa, and got in contact with a resourceful journalist there, Niren Tolsi, who managed to find out that Smyth was back in the UK, and even where he was staying in Bristol. At the start of January 2017, we went to lie in wait.

My colleague Guy Basnett lurked opposite the entrance and promised to alert us as soon as he saw movement. I’d gone off to fetch some coffee and cake, thinking we were in for a long wait. But no sooner had I returned to the car, than Guy called us to say Smyth and his wife Anne were emerging. Coffee flying, I jumped out with my cameraman Simon Vacher, assuming Smyth would evade us by diving into the underground car park at the apartment block where he was staying. So I wasted no time in getting to the point.

“We’re told you beat young men until they bled: why did you do that?”

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There was no denial. Instead, his response was: “I’m not talking about that”. But then rather than trying to evade me, he turned to walk along the river.

Simon started walking backwards with his heavy kit – no mean feat while trying to ensure Smyth remained in shot – for what became a pretty protracted interview on the hoof, culminating in me asking when he’d face justice. He never did.

I asked him about Andy’s attempted suicide. To which he replied: “I am not talking about this.” And finally I wanted to know why his disciples had to “bleed for Jesus”, which is what he’d told them. “There’s no question of that at all,” he responded.

Throughout our strange conversation, his wife Anne remained smiling disconcertingly.

The day before our first film was due to air, on 2 February, 2017, Lambeth Palace issued a statement on Justin Welby’s behalf, admitting that Mr Welby was a dormitory officer at the Iwerne holiday camp in the late 1970s, where Smyth was a leader, but denying that anyone had discussed abuse allegations with him. But – crucially – he also admitted that he’d been alerted to the abuse back in August 2013.

‘I had no suspicions at all’

Two years later, in a sit-down interview in the Channel 4 News studio, he was rather more expansive, saying: “I genuinely had no idea that there was anything as horrific as this going on..If I’d known that I’d have been very active but I had no suspicions at all.”

Subsequently the victims said he’d lied, and the Makin report, ordered after our 2017 investigation and finally published in November this year, declared that it was one of many “incorrect assertions”. Keith Makin suggested Mr Welby had had a “level of knowledge that John Smyth was of some concern” as long ago as the 1980s.

The victims received an advance copy of the Makin report on Monday 4 November. That very morning, a source also sent it to me. The 251 page document was devastating, not only for the Archbishop of Canterbury, but also the many bishops and clergymen who had known about Smyth, but done so little to stop the man Makin termed “the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church of England”.

My indefatigable producer Claire Sinka started preparing legal “right of reply” letters and I scrambled to set up interviews with the victims.

Ironically, we ended up interviewing Mark Stibbe the day before Donald Trump’s second victory, eight years after our first interview.

Discovering that the Makin review had leaked, Lambeth Palace brought forward publication, and offered an exclusive interview with the Archbishop.

Archbishop of Canterbury resigns

We met in the crypt at Lambeth Palace, where Anne Boleyn was told of her fate before being taken off to be executed.

As in 2019, he seemed nervous. But he was candid about his “incompetence”, and bluntly admitted that he’d considered quitting but had decided: “No, I’m not going to resign for this.”

Days later he did quit, becoming the only Archbishop of Canterbury in history to be forced out of office.

But John Smyth has avoided any responsibility for his actions. He died in August 2018 just as the British police were waiting to question him. The victims haven’t got justice. But at least now they’re seeing the Church held accountable for the most colossal cover-up.