The Archbishop of Canterbury has stepped down after an investigation found several failures to adequately report a volunteer who abused children.
Justin Welby, the most senior figure in the Church of England, has led the Church since 2013. In a statement, he said he stepped down “in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse.”
An independent review published last week found there had been “multiple missed opportunities” for the Church of England (aka Anglicanism) to report a man found to have violently abused more than 100 children over decades.
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the spiritual leader of the Church of England, and its most-senior figure after King Charles III. Alongside the Church position, the Archbishop has a seat in the Upper House of the UK Parliament.
The role of the Archbishop of Canterbury was first created by the Catholic Church in the 6th Century. In the 16th Century, King Henry VIII began the process of creating the Church of England after the Catholic Church would not let him dissolve his first marriage.
The Anglican Church has around 85 million members globally.
What happened?
In the 1970s, John Smyth, a prominent barrister, volunteered at Anglican holiday camps in Dorset, England.
During this time, he lived near an all-boys boarding school. The review found Smyth’s “strong associations with the Church” meant he had “easy and unsupervised access” to the students. Victims say Smyth groomed several boys at the school and invited them to the camps.
The review includes dozens of accounts of Smyth subjecting boys to intensely violent beatings at his home and at camp.
Smyth forced boys to take off all or some of their clothes when he would hit them with a cane up to 100 times per session. Many victims said they bled so much they had to wear nappies in the days after.
Several victims reported one child was beaten 800 times in one day. Smyth often told victims these beatings were because they had masturbated.
Officials at the church investigated Smyth’s abuse of children as early as 1982. He moved to Zimbabwe and continued running camps where he beat attendees. A boy died in “suspicious and unexplained” circumstances at one of the camps. A trial against Smyth fell through.
Report
Smyth’s abuses were publicly revealed by UK TV network Channel 4 in 2017.
Smyth died in 2018, before he could be held criminally responsible.
Two years later, an independent review was set up to look into the Church’s handling of Smyth’s abuse.
In its final report published last week, it said Smyth was “the most prolific serial abuser to be associated with the Church”, and that “Church officers” knew about the abuse for “decades, without fully acting on it”.
The review concluded Smyth subjected at least 30 boys and young men in the UK, and a further 85 in Africa, to “traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual
attacks”, noting it’s likely “many more people suffered abuse”. Victims included members of his own family.
It blamed senior members of the church for covering up Smyth’s abuse, saying key decisions “were reached behind closed doors”.
In response, church leaders said “there is never a place for covering up abuse“ and committed to reform.
Justin Welby
Welby attended the camps as a child and young man.
The review found that Welby was directly told about Smyth’s abuse in 2013, after becoming Archbishop.
It added that “several opportunities were missed” to report Smyth to UK police from 2013 until his death in 2018.
Welby acknowledged in a statement last week that he “failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated”.
Pressure for Welby’s resignation grew in the week following the release of the review, including a petition circulated by bishops.
Overnight, the Archbishop announced he would step down, saying it was “in the best interest of the Church of England.”
Welby had to ask King Charles III for permission to resign.
“I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024,” he said in a statement.
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