Church apologizes for underestimating risk of abuse by British pastor

The late John Smyth is accused of victimizing over 100 boys in Zimbabwe and the UK as a lay preacher in the 1970s and 1980s

The Anglican Church of Southern Africa (ACSA) has apologized for failing to protect members, including children, from the risk of abuse by a British pastor, John Smyth, who died without facing criminal charges.

The apology by Thabo Makgoba, Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, on Tuesday came following the publication of a new report on Smyth on January 31. According to the inquiry, which Makgoba authorized last year, no evidence of “similar abuse” by the pastor while he was in South Africa was found. However, it acknowledged that there was a “very high risk that [cases of abuses] could have happened.”

“We find that the protective measures in place within ACSA at the time Smyth lived in South Africa inadequately mitigated the serious risk of such conduct being repeated here by Smyth, or others,” the Farlam-Ramphele Panel reported.

“I accept the panel’s findings unreservedly. I acknowledge that during Smyth’s time in Cape Town, God’s people were exposed to the potential of his abuse and I and the Diocese apologize to our congregants and the wider community that we did not protect people from that risk,” archbishop Makgoba said in response.

Smyth was a Canadian-born British attorney and a youth pastor. He is accused of abusing dozens of children in Zimbabwe, where he had lived from 1985 until 2001, when he moved to South Africa and died in 2018 while under investigation.

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According to the Makin Review, an independent investigation published in the UK in November, Smyth used his position as a lay preacher working with youth to select boys and young men for his “clearly sexually motivated, sadistic regime” of vicious beatings. He is estimated to have victimized more than 100 children and young men in the UK and Zimbabwe in the 1970s and 1980s. He would bring his victims home and flogged them with a garden cane, some to the point where they had to wear diapers because of the bleeding.

Keith Makin, a former British government official who led the independent review described the abuse by Smyth as “prolific and abhorrent.” Makin said the Church of England’s responses to the efforts of some individuals to bring the misconduct to the attention of authorities were completely ineffective and amounted to a cover-up.

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Following the report, Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, resigned from his position as the highest-ranking clergyman in the Church of England, taking full responsibility for inaction regarding Smyth’s alleged wrongdoing.

The latest probe in South Africa was authorized in response to the Makin report to determine whether the ACSA received warnings about Smyth from the Church of England and what measures were developed to prevent such abuses.

“Although Smyth’s abuses in the UK and then Zimbabwe were (according to the UK inquiry) known to the Church of England from the early 1980s, no warning was given to ACSA until 2013,” the panel stated.