UNITED KINGDOM
The Guardian
Sandra Laville and Harriet Sherwood
Thursday 2 February 2017
One of Britain’s leading public schools has been forced to defend its role in an alleged cover up of serious physical abuse at Christian summer camps attended by its pupils in the 1970s and 1980s.
Winchester College knew in 1982 about allegations of sadomasochistic abuse at the hands of John Smyth, a British QC who ran a series of Christian summer camps known as “bash camps”.
The current archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, also attended the camps as a dormitory officer and knew Smyth but in a statement Lambeth Palace said “no one discussed allegations of abuse by John Smyth with him”.
The abuse emerged that year following a suicide attempt by one of the alleged victims. A secret report into the physical abuse was carried out by the Iwerne Trust, which ran the camps for public schoolboys, in 1982.
It described “horrific” beatings of teenage boys, sometimes until they bled. Winchester College, whose pupils were among the alleged victims, was informed of the allegations but neither the college nor the trust reported Smyth to the police.
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