John Smyth
Schroedingers Cat
Shipmate
This week on C4 in the UK, there was a documentary about this particular piece of shit. A massive abuser, who escaped justice, in a sense, by dying.
I watched this. I don't recommend it, but it is very well done, it is just brutally honest and his abuse was appalling.
I found it especially disturbing because I was just off the edge of some of this - no, not involved (he only targetted posh kids, and that I wasn't). But things like the Festival of Hate - sorry Light I had involvement in the outfall of this. I think I probably knew people who knew victims - but if there had not been a 10 year difference, i would probably have known victims. It makes it feel very personal.
But also, he was working within the Church of England. He did not set up a cult of his own, because he was rich and Public School educated and connected, he set up a cult in the CofE. The cult is the Evangelical wing of the church. And he continued to abuse many many young boys. Driving some to suicide. And many to MH problems.
All under the auspices of the church. All known by senior people in the church. Including Justin Welby.
And when they worked it out, they sent him to Zimbabwe, instead of prison. Where he continued his abuse.
When he was being called back the the UK to face justice, he died. Not apparently suspicious, but I do wonder. So I thought he deserved a thread in hell, where he can read it. Although probably not until it has sunk down to the deepest depths.
I am glad I got out. I am glad I wrote my book about getting out. Because the CofE is corrupt.
[corrected title - Alan Cresswell]
I watched this. I don't recommend it, but it is very well done, it is just brutally honest and his abuse was appalling.
I found it especially disturbing because I was just off the edge of some of this - no, not involved (he only targetted posh kids, and that I wasn't). But things like the Festival of Hate - sorry Light I had involvement in the outfall of this. I think I probably knew people who knew victims - but if there had not been a 10 year difference, i would probably have known victims. It makes it feel very personal.
But also, he was working within the Church of England. He did not set up a cult of his own, because he was rich and Public School educated and connected, he set up a cult in the CofE. The cult is the Evangelical wing of the church. And he continued to abuse many many young boys. Driving some to suicide. And many to MH problems.
All under the auspices of the church. All known by senior people in the church. Including Justin Welby.
And when they worked it out, they sent him to Zimbabwe, instead of prison. Where he continued his abuse.
When he was being called back the the UK to face justice, he died. Not apparently suspicious, but I do wonder. So I thought he deserved a thread in hell, where he can read it. Although probably not until it has sunk down to the deepest depths.
I am glad I got out. I am glad I wrote my book about getting out. Because the CofE is corrupt.
[corrected title - Alan Cresswell]
Comments
FWIW, and with the usual caveat, here's the Wikipedia article about Smyth:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smyth_(barrister)
Or the church is dying anyway. It's anyone's guess what will die first.....
My thoughts exactly. The C of E has just about had it, as an institution, and not before time.
There are, of course, many faithful people and clergy, trying their best to keep the rumour of God alive.
Would it be possible to do away with the parish structure, I wonder? I admit that this is tangential to the issue of the egregious Smyth, and others like him.
Also, the Establishment needs dismantling. I'm afraid that there's a lot more to that, including the House of Lords, Oxbridge colleges, theological colleges, the Bar, and many other structures of power and influence.
Agreed.
Agreed, though this would be an Herculean task, to say the least. Fair point as regards the parish structure.
Well, yes. The C of E is not the only church or institution to have been hit by abuse scandals in recent years.
The Evangelicals in the C of E (Like me) prove the culture is not rotten to the core every day. I don’t care what you say. You are just plain wrong. I know only what has been in the news about John Smyth. He is the exception not the rule. We are socially minded. I support CAP and other groups. Don’t group us all with him.
(*) I cannot say with absolute truth that I have never met a buchmanite, because I did once have a Korean student who had been involved with MRA in high school. She seemed to know little of the organization's anglosphere reputation as a conservative anti-vice campaign, and reported that her duties mostly involved doing stsndard volunteer work helping the elderly etc.
Allow any minors under the authority of an adult to carry a cell-phone camera and to start filming whenever they so wish.
I know, I know. It'll be a digital Lord Of The Flies. But I don't think it's possible to deny that private filming of classrooms by students has, in numerous cases, helped reveal inappropriate behaviour by adults in positions of trust. Examples available upon request.
I wonder whether part of the problem here is that churches of all kinds are still deeply uncomfortable talking about sex at all.
Abusers rely on secrecy, silence, and embarrassment. A culture that treats sex as taboo, or unspeakable except in moralised terms, makes that secrecy much easier to maintain.
If sex cannot be named openly, honestly, and without shame, how does a victim ever find a safe way to break the silence?
If you, as a culture, believe it is OK to cane children - have you written anywhere what constitutes too much ? I doubt it.
This is a structural issue for the Church of England as a whole, because of the structures of privilege I mentioned before. What the ultimate effect will be I simply have no idea.
I am not blaming all Evangelicals in the CofE. I am blaming the evo wing - the establishment structured that gave him power and enabled him. I was an evo Anglican. And I have known so many good and decent people within there. Including someone who rose high an was also implicated.
The system is the thing that is broken and corrupt.
I especially blame the people who supported him after the allegations became public and funded his move to Africa, they have blood on their hands.
This is for me one of the aspects of the John Smyth case that needs to be looked at more closely. There is such an old tenacious pattern of 'hiding' or sheltering serial abusers, paedophiles, criminals and sadists out of sight in colonial territories with no thought for victimised locals and vulnerable communities. In Zimbabwe, Smyth's victims were often poorer scholarship boys from elitist schools or Christian camps, among them 16-year-old Guide Nyachuru, who was found dead in a camp swimming pool in 1992. More than three decades later, Nyachuru’s family has joined six other Zimbabwean survivors in a lawsuit against the Church, demanding accountability for both the abuse and the Church’s deliberate inaction. Smyth then moved to South Africa in 2001 and continued the grooming, sadistic beatings and abuse with impunity, even though many in church circles and educational groups knew him to be a sexual offender.
At that time police checks were still regional and the VSO were probably unaware of his conviction.
The children’s act only came in 1989 (one of Thatchers few good things) child protection as we understand it today was in its infancy really. National checks only came in after the Soham murders, in 2002.
If you, as a culture, believe it is OK to cane children - have you written anywhere what constitutes too much ? I doubt it.
I can't put a date to it, though I'd make an educated guess that it was in the 1880s, but there were written guidelines re corporal punishment in all Scottish state schools. The only permissible implement was the tawse (leather belt) on the palm of outstretched hands. The tawse had to be something (wide enough? stiff enough?) not to wrap itself around the hand. Most teachers used a "Lochgelly" which was a standardised size / weight. Use of a cane on a pupil, or a tawse on any part of the body other than the hand was a sacking offence.
So, yes, it's possible to to have a culture which believes in corporal punishment and has written rules as to what constitutes too much.
This was in state schools, of course, fee paying schools had more freedom.
Fuck corporal punishment and the culture which supported it.
Re sexual abuse - husband had a similar case in his minor public school of an offender not being prosecuted but having to leave and going to teach abroad ( I forget where). And honestly fuck everyone who enabled that kind of thing - accepted culture at the time or no.
Role-playing of many types is popular. To be honest I'd rather hope that's the main market.
I would agree that those who enabled John to move to Zimbabwe, rather than jail, are especially responsible. It is so reminiscent of the accusations against the Catholic church who have also moved priests rather than punish them. It is not acceptable whoever does it.
The whole history of child education and schools is one of 200 years of experimenting on kids. It is not one of progress, in the main. And the fact that beating children was only outlawed in my time at school is shocking.
If they weren't so expensive, I'd buy a Lochgelly. But then my PhD is on Victorian education and I do give talks on it. I've always felt my audience's attention might be more focussed if I had one with me....
A word of warning, from one who knows - searching for "tawse" on t'Internet can result in some rather ..emm.. niche adverts appearing.
I'm told that in the coded language of prostitute's advertising "English spoken" refers to someone who will administer corporal punishment to their clients.
Scots may have dodged a bullet on that one, if it's with a tawse.
Related to la vice anglais, I would assume.
Indeed.
Prisons and police were routinely violent. Borstalls were often considered places to "straighten out" wayward youth, usually until they could join the army or move into more serious crime. Even wayward women were sometimes beaten in places like the Magdalene laundries.
Which isn't to say everyone consented or experienced violence, but is to say that it was part of an accepted national narrative.
If anything the unusual part of this story is that it is wealthy, respectable people beating other high status people rather than lower status people.
Have you read how severe these beatings were? There are orders of magnitude of difference between what was normalised in society at the time and what Smyth was doing.
Their abuse never got out of hand ... it was just accepted in those days.
The past is a foreign country ......
I would concur. These beatings were viscous.
This is a really amazing sentence.
I suspect many people subjected to abuse that "never got out of hand" are able to repress its effects and move on with their lives. But the effects remain. If nothing else, you get an idea of what can happen to you.
To a certain extent, minimization maybe a coping strategy. Emotional abuse can be even harder to recognise.
I see my attempt at humour even in this dark area of Human behaviour went clunk. My bad.