The Church of England is preparing charges against 10 mostly retired clergy, including former Archbishop George Carey and retired Bishop of Durham Paul Butler, who stand accused of not acting on reports of abuses by layman John Smyth in the 1970s and 1980s.

Smyth used a twisted interpretation of Hebrews 12:4 to convince young men that they could draw closer to God by allowing him to beat them with a cane, often to the point that their posteriors were bleeding profusely. Smyth’s wife reportedly provided his victims with diapers and ointment to help with the wounds.

Several of the 10 were significant figures in conservative evangelical circles within the Church of England. Smyth, a popular speaker, was chairman of the trust that operated the Iwerne Camps, through which he found many of his victims, from 1974 to 1982.

Some of the 10, such as Lord Carey, deny that they ever received information about Smyth’s abuses. The Makin Report claims that Butler, while president of Scripture Union, a charity with close ties to the Iwerne Camps, received a report of abuse allegations in 2015 from the Rev. Tim Hastie-Smith, then the organization’s national director. Butler claims that the information passed on to him contained few details, and that his role with Scripture Union was “advisory and not managerial.”

The Makin Report said that the Ven. Roger Combes, former Archdeacon of Horsham, received a copy of a report in 1982 that described Smyth’s abuses of 22 young men. Combes said in the Makin Report that he “held this [earlier report] unopened on his knee, realized the seriousness and the nature of the report, and chose not to read it” because he thought “the victims would be embarrassed if he knew the details.”

The 10 clergy are accused of knowing about Smyth’s abuses before they were exposed by a Channel 4 investigative report in 2017 but failing to report his abuses to police.

The charges, which were externally reviewed, represent the end point of a four-step procedure outlined in the Makin Report. A Church of England statement explained the four stages:

• “Stage one is an initial assessment of risk, examining if anyone criticised in the review is an immediate safeguarding risk of harm to others or not.”
• “Stage two of the [National Safeguarding Team] process is a more in-depth assessment to be completed by Regional Safeguarding Leads, after which recommendations will be made.”
• “Stage three is an examination of the assessment made in stage two by senior members of the NST, plus two independent and one senior lawyer in the [National Church Institutions] Legal Office, after which decisions will be made to determine what action will be taken in respect of individuals, including where appropriate disciplinary action.”
• “Stage four is a robust external scrutiny of those decisions by an independent barrister.”

These are the ten clergy facing charges, and the dioceses in which they do post-retirement ministry:

• Bishop Paul Butler, Southwell & Notts
• Lord Carey, Oxford
• The Ven. Roger Combes, Chichester
• The Rev. Sue Colman, London and Winchester
• The Rev. Andrew Cornes, Chichester
• The Rev. Tim Hastie-Smith, Gloucester
• The Rev. Hugh Palmer, London and Gloucester
• The Rev. Paul Perkin, Southwark
• The Rev. Nick Stott, Gloucester
• The Rev. John Woolmer, Leicester

Bishop Stephen Conway of Lincoln and Bishop Jo Bailey Wells, former chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, are among clergy not facing charges, though they were mentioned in the Makin Report and had been under pressure to resign in the days after the report was released last November. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is also not named.

The church statement explained: “In respect of all those under the authority or oversight of the Church of England not listed here but criticized in the Makin Review, the process has concluded that there is insufficient evidence to meet the threshold for instituting disciplinary proceedings at this time.”

The matter now lays in the hands of the President of the Tribunals, the Rt. Hon. Sir Stephen Males, who will determine if the National Safeguarding Team should bring complaints against any or all of the clerics under the terms of the Clergy Discipline Measure.

This article has been reprinted with permission from The Living Church.

Douglas LeBlanc, Associate Editor of The Living Church, writes about Christianity and culture.