In a joint statement, external, the Church of England’s lead safeguarding bishop, Joanne Grenfell, and the national director of safeguarding, Alexander Kubeyinje, said they were “deeply sorry for the horrific abuse inflicted by the late John Smyth and its lifelong effects, already spanning more than 40 years”.
Smyth is said to have subjected his victims to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks, permanently marking their lives.
Despite his “appalling” actions having been identified in the 1980s, the report concluded he was never fully exposed and was therefore able to continue his abuse.
He had been in the process of being extradited from Zimbabwe after the allegations arose in 2017 and so was “never bought to justice for the abuse”, the review said.
The review, commissioned a year after Smyth’s death by the Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England, found that an argument had been made that the abuses were “examples of over-enthusiastic corporal punishment”.
But the report stated: “The conclusion of the Review is that he committed criminal acts of gross abuse.”
