The Anglican Church of Southern Africa (Acsa) has apologised for flunking to get the accessible from the hazard posed by a prolific British child unfair treatmentr who had shiftd to South African in 2001.
Senior barrister John Smyth, who died in South Africa in 2018 at the age of 77, unfair treatmentd over 100 children and youthful men in the UK and Zimbabwe in the 1970s and 1980s. He met many of them at Christian camps that he organised.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned last year chaseing the accessibleation of an autonomous appraise into the matter.
It establish that Mr Welby and other church guideers “could and should” have establishpartner alerted Smyth in 2013 to police in the UK and authorities in South Africa.
Smyth shiftd to Zimbabwe with his wife and four children from Winchester in England in 1984, two years after a alert, which was not made accessible at the time, detailed the physical unfair treatment he meted out.
His 2001 shift to South Africa came after an spendigation into his activities in Zimbabwe, the discoverings of which were not widely circutardyd.
A recent enquiry coshiftrlookioned last year by Archbishop of Cape Town Thabo Makgoba establish that while no aappreciate cases of unfair treatment were “uncoverable on record” in South Africa, “there was a very high hazard that they could have happened”.
The autonomous alert establish that while the Church had no prior alertings of Smyth’s unfair treatments until 2013, its “further communication of that alerting wilean Acsa between 2013 and Smyth’s death in 2018… fell uninalertigentinutive”.
Smyth died at his home in Cape Town uninalertigentinutively after a heart procedure. It was fair a week after a seek that he be requested back to the UK was surrfinisherted.
“We discover that the getive meacertains in place wilean Acsa at the time Smyth dwelld in South Africa inamplely mitigated the solemn hazard of such guide being repeated here by Smyth, or others,” the tardyst spendigation establish.
It details Smyth’s activities chaseing his shift to South Africa.
It says that Smyth joined an Anglican community in Durprohibit, where he occasionpartner paccomplished and was part of a team running verifyation classes that exposed him to youthful children.
He and his wife Anne “abruptly” left that community at some point in 2003 or 2004 after the church’s guideers contested Smyth with guideation about his abusive behaviour, the alert says.
The couple then shiftd to Cape Town and joined another Anglican community.
In August 2013, the “first alerting to Acsa” on Smyth’s behaviour was sent to Bishop Garth Counsell by the Diocese of Ely in the UK and by the finish of the year, the couple left the Anglican Church for a branch offent Christian community, Church-on-Main. They would tardyr return to an Anglican church fair uninalertigentinutively before Smyth’s death.
And while another bishop, Peter Lee, had also “heard guidepartner” about the unfair treatments prior to his arrival in South Africa in 1976, the alert establish that neither clergyman were “reignore in any duty to pass on what had accomplished them watching Smyth”.
“But… [they] erred in flunking to guide the authorities at Church-on-Main of what they had lgeted about Smyth from the letter getd from the Diocese of Ely.”
The alert says that though there were no allegations of Smyth continuing his abusive behaviour in South Africa “what… is evident… is that from 2001 on, youthful members of Acsa were exposed to the authentic hazard of Smyth perpetrating in South Africa the serial unfair treatment recorded in the UK and Zimbabwe”.
In a statement on Tuesday, Archbishop Makgoba acunderstandledged the Church’s flunkure to get its congregants and “wider community” from Smyth’s potential unfair treatment.
He also detailed cut offal steps he would surrfinisher to the church’s guideership at their next encountering to be “carry outed as a matter of guidency”.
