Justin Welby resigns over claims church ‘covered up’ abuse of 100 boys

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has resigned after a report found serial child abuse had been ‘covered up’ for decades by the church.

Welby, 68, failed to ensure a proper investigation was carried out into the ‘abhorrent’ abuse of more than 130 boys and young men starting in the 1970s by John Smyth QC.

The Church of England has known at the highest level about the abuse since July 2013, the independent Makin Report found.

Welby, the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans worldwide, became aware a month later. If he had reported it to police, Smyth may have been brought to justice, the report said.

In his resignation letter, Welby confirmed today that he had ‘sought the gracious permission’ of King Charles to resign from his post.

‘I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church,’ he said.

‘As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse.’

Since the report was published last week, the archbishop faced mounting pressure to step down.

A petition started by three members of the church’s parliament, the General Synod, gathered more than 13,000 signatures.

‘We must see change, for the sake of survivors, for the protection of the vulnerable, and for the good of the Church – and we share this determination across our traditions,’ the petition read.

‘With sadness, we do not think there is any alternative to his immediate resignation if the process of change and healing is to start now.’

The Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, said yesterday that the archbishop resigning would not ‘solve the safeguarding problem’ but would ‘be a very clear indication that a line has been drawn’.

‘I think rightly people are asking the question “Can we really trust the Church of England to keep us safe?” And I think the answer at the moment is “no”,’ she told the BBC.

The report said while some had pushed for the abuse to be investigated by the police, ‘the responses by the Church of England and others were wholly ineffective and amounted to a coverup’.

Welby ‘held a personal and moral responsibility to pursue this further, whatever the policies at play at the time required’.

Welby has held his position since 2013 and was set to retire in 2026.

Smith, a prominent lawyer who died aged 77 in 2018, is believed to be the most prolific serial abuser associated with the church. He ran a series of Christian summer camps in the 1970s and 1980s.

The evangelical Christian leader and anti-LGBTQ+ campaigner groomed public schoolboys and young men at Christian summer camps, universities and the private school Winchester College before subjecting them to severe beatings at his garden shed in his Winchester home.

He inflicted ‘traumatic physical, sexual, psychological and spiritual attacks’, on as many as 130 survivors across three countries.

‘The impact of that abuse is impossible to overstate and has permanently marked the lives of his victims,’ the report said.

Smyth could have and should have been reported to the police, Keith Makin, a social services director who led the investigation, said, a step that could have led to a conviction.

He moved to Zimbabwe in the mid-1980s shortly after an internal inquiry by the Iwerne Trust, a Christian charity that runs the camps, determined he battered the boys with bamboo canes.

The trust, however, did not refer Smyth to the police or make its findings public.

Paul Stanfield, chief executive of the Childlight Global Child Safety Institute, said failing to report evidence of the sexual abuse of children should be an offence.

‘People in positions of power cannot be permitted to turn a blind eye to abuse,’ he said. ‘When victims and survivors have the courage to come forward, that courage must be repaid with action to ensure justice is done.’

Welby had first met Smyth at an Iwerne Trust holiday camp in Dorset. ‘As I recall him, he was a charming, delightful, very clever, brilliant speaker. I wasn’t a close friend of his, I wasn’t in his inner circle or in the inner circle of the leadership of the camp, far from it,’ Welby said.

Makin concluded Welby ‘may not have known of the extreme seriousness of the abuse, but it is most probable that he would have had at least a level of knowledge that John Smyth was of some concern’.

The allegations would not come to light until a Channel 4 report in 2017.

Smyth and his wife, Anne, were formally excommunicated that year from their local church in Cape Town, South Africa, where they had worshipped since 2013.

Church-on-Main leaders alleged Smyth was meeting with young boys at a sports club before showering together and asking them about ‘pornography, masturbation, and other sexual matters’.

Smyth died in Bergvliet, just near the South African capital, the following year of heart failure.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

For more stories like this, check our news page.