Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby stepped down four days ago after a damning investigation revealed his failure to investigate serious allegations of physical and sexual abuse linked to a Church volunteer at Christian summer camps.
At 68, Welby announced his resignation on November 12, just days after the independent Makin Report criticised his response to abuse claims dating back to the 1970s.
In a statement filled with regret, he took “personal and institutional responsibility” for not addressing the “heinous abuses” attributed to the late John Smyth, a volunteer implicated in the allegations.
Smyth, a Canadian-born British barrister and evangelical, held positions within the Iwerne Trust, a charity that organized Christian camps in England and Wales, according to media reports.
He is accused of physical abuse of boys attending these camps during the 1970s and 1980s. The charity reported it in a 1982 report. Allegedly, Smyth would invite students from prestigious schools, including Winchester College, to his home, where he subjected them to brutal canings in his shed.
Neither the trust, the Church, nor the schools attended by such victims reported the abuse to the police, allowing Smyth’s actions to go unchecked for decades. This oversight has now come under intense scrutiny amid the ongoing scandal.
In 1992, following charges related to the death of a teenage boy found in a swimming pool, John Smyth relocated to Cape Town, South Africa.
Smyth passed away in Cape Town in 2017 at the age of 77, leaving behind a legacy tainted by the abuse he allegedly perpetrated and the failures of institutions to hold him accountable.
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Welby expressed a renewed sense of shame over the Church of England’s historic safeguarding failures, acknowledging the deep impact of such revelations.
Educated at the prestigious Eton College, the former archbishop of Canterbury spent over a decade in the oil industry before his ordination in 1992. He became the senior leader of the Church of England in 2013.
As a prominent figure in the global Anglican community, he was known for his vocal stance on a range of contentious issues, including same-sex marriage, immigration policy in Britain, the Gaza conflict, reparations for slavery, climate change, and his own struggles with mental health.
