UNITED KINGDOM
Telegraph
Patrick Foster Nicola Harley Lydia Willgress
1 FEBRUARY 2017
The Archbishop of Canterbury issued an “unreserved and unequivocal” apology on Wednesday on behalf of the Church of England after admitting he had worked at holiday camps at which teenage boys were groomed for abuse.
The Most Rev Justin Welby said the Church had “failed terribly” by not reporting John Smyth QC, the head of the Christian charity that ran the summer camps, to police after he was accused of carrying out a string of “horrific” sado-masochistic attacks in the late Seventies.
Channel 4 News will on Thursday broadcast allegations that Mr Smyth used the camps, which were attended by boys from some of Britain’s leading public schools, to gain access to teenagers, whom he forced to strip naked before subjecting them to savage beatings.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, the Archbishop said that he had been friends with Mr Smyth during the late Seventies, when he worked as a dormitory officer at the camps, run by the Iwerne Trust, and had kept in “occasional” contact with the barrister since.
The Archbishop says that he was made aware of the allegations against Mr Smyth in 2013 when police eventually became involved.
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