Barry Duke, the Angry Atheist

Pointing and laughing at religious lunacy for more than half-a-century

Author of ‘Bleeding for Jesus’ says serial abuser John Smyth was ‘the C of E’s Jimmy Savile’

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ANDREW Graystone, above, in his book Bleeding for Jesus: John Smyth and the Cult of Iwerne Camps, has reacted to an independent review of the abuse carried out by Smyth — who used military-style Christian camps to recruit boys who were subsequently viciously abused — as “the Church of England’s very own Jimmy Savlle.”

In a statement issued this week on behalf of a number of victims and survivors of the late barrister, who had teamed up with fellow “moral crusader” Mary Whitehouse to win a blasphemous libel case against Gay News, Graystone wrote:

The Church continues to engage by utterly inappropriate means with victims & survivors in 2024. It has shown no interest in addressing this throughout the last 40 + years. We are particularly concerned that some Church leaders seek to characterise John Smyth
as a ‘lone wolf’. In fact he is part of a long and ongoing tradition of abusers …

It should be pointed out that Whitehouse adored the real Savile, a serial paedophile, and he won an award from Whitehouse’s National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association in 1977 for his “wholesome family entertainment”.

In a sort of “see, the Roman Catholic Church is not the only ones to harbour and protect abusers, The Tablet, a leading Catholic publication, seized upon the review, led by Keith Makin, an expert in safeguarding, who is quoted as saying:

His victims were subjected to traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attack. The impact of that abuse is impossible to overstate and has permanently marked the lives of his victims. John Smyth’s own family are victims of his abuse.

Makin said:

The abuse at the hands of John Smyth was prolific and abhorrent. Words cannot adequately describe the horror of what transpired.

It also referred to Graystone’s statement.

John Smyth QC who died aged 77 in 2018

In a statement posted on his website at Lambeth Palace, Archbishop Justin Welby said:

The pain experienced by the victims in this case is unimaginable. They have lived with the trauma inflicted by John Smyth’s horrendous abuse for more than 40 years, both here in the UK and in Southern Africa, particularly Zimbabwe.

I recognise the courage of those victims, including those related to John Smyth, who have come forward and relived their trauma through contributing to this review. I know their willingness to share their painful testimonies will come at great personal cost.

I am deeply sorry that this abuse happened. I am so sorry that in places where these young men, and boys, should have felt safe and where they should have experienced god’s love for them, they were subjected to physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse. I am sorry that concealment by many people who were fully aware of the abuse over many years meant that John Smyth was able to abuse overseas and died before he ever faced justice. The report rightly condemns that behaviour.

He says he had no idea or suspicion of this abuse before 2013.

Nevertheless the review is clear that I personally failed to ensure that after disclosure in 2013 the awful tragedy was energetically investigated. Since that time the way in which the Church of England engages with victims and survivors has changed beyond recognition. Checks and balances introduced seek to ensure that the same could not happen today.

Hat tip: Stephen Harvie and Keith Porteous Wood

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7 responses to “Author of ‘Bleeding for Jesus’ says serial abuser John Smyth was ‘the C of E’s Jimmy Savile’”

  1. malcolmjdodd Avatar
    malcolmjdodd

    Why do we only discover the facts about abusers after they are beyond the law?

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply
    1. stephenharvie Avatar
      stephenharvie

      Because they have friends in high places who both enable them and cover up the abuse to protect ‘the church’.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply
      1. Broga Avatar
        Broga

        And the friends are often bound together at public i.e. very expensive private schools. They get promotions for each other including high political appointments, special medical treatments and protection from legal action. We don’t have a democracy. We have a mediocre royal family, automatically elected generation after generation and paid vast sums from taxes and excused taxes the rest of us pay. This continues under a supposed Labour government.

        As for tackling global warming. Forget it. That would curb oil, coal and other profits. Politicians are with reason regarded as corrupt.

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  2. stephenharvie Avatar
    stephenharvie

    A friend of Mary Shitehouse – says it all really…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. Broga Avatar
    Broga

    The human species has evolved, in its 300,000 years, into a planetary, destructive pest. And a prime cause for this, and which could not have happened in its absence is religion i.e. superstition. In the conviction that we are made in God’s image (whatever that means) each individual person is super important, chosen by God and any other creature is our pawn to be slaughtered, tortured, hunted for pleasure, eaten and rendered extinct at our convenience.

    We have polluted the air, filled the rivers with our sewage, destroyed 70 per cent of the insects on which we depend. And despite the most dire warnings from scores of scientists that we are on the age of catastrophe little restraint is shown. And, amazingly thanks to religion, millions of suckers, have elected a monster as a semii God and given him supreme power.

    And Trump, a convicted criminal and rapist has declaired that global warming is a “hoax.” The Archbishop Welby, head of the C. of E is doing his best to deny a peaceful death through assisted dying to terminally ill patients who are forced to spend their final months in agony. How else could this have happened other than via religion?

    And so the forests and jungles continue to be razed, other creatured are killed and we kill each other with enthusiasm. There are many good people and admirable in their work. But not enough to save us on our already overcrowded planet.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. malcolmjdodd Avatar
      malcolmjdodd

      I consulted my tea leaves and saw the chump being declared unfit and removed at 1607 GMT on 1 April 2027; I will double-check this with my tarot cards and divining rods.

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  4. stephenharvie Avatar
    stephenharvie

    From Wikipedia Smyth moved to Zimbabwe in 1984, where in 1986 he set up mission Zambesi Ministries, which held summer camps for boys from the country’s leading schools. He was arrested in 1997 in the investigation into the drowning of Guide Nyachuru, a 16-year-old adolescent, at the Marondera camp. Nyachuru’s unclothed body was found at Ruzawi School pool in December 1992. Smyth always said that his death was an accident. The possibility of culpable homicide was after a long investigation ruled as unlikely, but raised doubts about his behaviour towards boys in his care. He subsequently moved to South Africa.

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